Just last week, Lynch hosted the People’s Choice Awards, returned as host of Hollywood Game Night and debuted her new comedy, Angel From Hell. In it, she plays a dishevelled woman named Amy who claims to be the guardian angel of uptight doctor Allison (Maggie Lawson).

Allison initially brushes off Amy as wine-sloshed and/or mentally unstable, but she questions her assumptions when Amy’s warnings — like one concerning a cheating boyfriend — prove valuable.

The woman formerly known as Sue Sylvester on Glee spoke about her new show, the beauty of not having goals, and which celebrity she’d most like her guardian angel to be like.

Q What about this role appealed to you after six seasons on Glee?

A Amy just really spoke to me. I thought she was hilarious and soft and compassionate, and could be harsh when the truth needed to be told. The only agenda she has is to guide Allison so she has a wonderful life.

Maggie Lawson, left, and Jane Lynch in Angel From Hell. [CBS]

Q Do you believe in angels?

A I do, actually. I think they come in many forms. I think we’re guided in this life, and sometimes a friend will say something and it resonates. You might find a passage in a book that really opens your heart and sets you on a different path. I don’t know that I have a guardian angel — I probably have them all around me and you probably do, too.

Q If you did have a guardian angel, which celebrity would you want them to be like?

A A Bill Murray type — somebody who’s sloppy, but very wise. And who wouldn’t want Susan Sarandon? She’s so smart and so gorgeous and so reserved. That would be a great opposite for me.

Q Glee wrapped up last year — do you miss wearing Sue’s tracksuits?

A Not really — I got kind of sick of them. But the great thing was that I knew they would fit, I knew they’d look good and there were no mysteries about what I was going to wear.

And I’m doing kind of the same thing in Angel From Hell. I have one outfit, which is kind of nice. I put it together with our wardrobe designer — it’s this army jacket that has the sleeves cut off and a T-shirt and my own pyjama bottoms.

Maggie Lawson as Allison, left, and Jane Lynch as Amy on Angel From Hell. [CBS]

Q Who are some of your comedic influences?

A Eve Arden is a wonderful actress even though she’s not a comedic one, and Carol Burnett for damn sure. And Jennifer Saunders, who’s on a show called Absolutely Fabulous. I felt like the world had been reinvented when I started watching it. She’s amazing.

Q Kate McKinnon spoofs you as host of Hollywood Game Night on Saturday Night Live. What do you think of her impression?

A I think it’s fantastic — I love those sketches. I think it’s great. It’s the best form of flattery.

Q You became a household name later in your career, even though you’d already done so many projects. Are you happy that this level of visibility came when it did?

A It just kind of works out perfectly if you just allow things to take their own course. I do say that if I had more success as a younger person, I don’t know that I would handle it as graciously as I do now. I think my estimation of myself would’ve come and go with the tide of public opinion, which would’ve been a very bad place to be.

Q You’ve won a Golden Globe and three Emmys, hosted the Emmys, done Broadway and have a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. Is there anything else on your bucket list?

A I really just take it a thing at a time. I really don’t have goals — I rarely set my sights on anything. It doesn’t feel natural. I just got this great television show and it’s not something I designed. I think I do better when I allow my guardian angel to guide me.

]]>http://o.canada.com/entertainment/television/jane-lynch-happy-for-heavenly-role-in-angel-from-hell/feed0Jane Lynch stars in Angel From Hellmhank2012Maggie Lawson, left, and Jane Lynch in Angel From Hell. Angel From HellIs Steven Spielberg’s Red Band Society TV’s sleeper hit? (with video)http://o.canada.com/entertainment/television/is-steven-spielbergs-red-band-society-tvs-sleeper-hit-with-video
http://o.canada.com/entertainment/television/is-steven-spielbergs-red-band-society-tvs-sleeper-hit-with-video#respondFri, 12 Sep 2014 16:58:39 +0000http://o.canada.com/?p=513035]]>There are so many red lines in Red Band Society, it’s a wonder it all holds together in the end. And yet, that’s exactly what it does.

This odd, quirky coming-of-age drama is set in the pediatric ward of a big-city hospital, where adolescents of various ages are battling illnesses, some of them life-threatening.

All the familiar TV clichés are there, from the boy in a coma who speaks in voice-over throughout the opening episode (“Everyone has two stories: the one they want you to know, and the one they don’t.”) to the self-absorbed cheerleader and card-carrying mean girl struck down — House-like — by a seizure in the middle of cheerleading practice, to the crusty-but-benign pediatric supervisor, Nurse Jackson, played with a canny mix of brusque efficiency and carefully hidden empathy by Academy Award-winning actress Octavia Spencer. You can see the Coldplay montage coming at the hour’s end from a mile away.

And yet … it works. Red Band Society hails from Steven Spielberg’s Amblin Television, and it has all the earmarks you might expect. What you might not expect is how fast, sharp and witty it is. The opening hour was directed by Glee and American Horror Story veteran Alfonso Gomez-Rejon, and there’s a lively joie de vivre to Red Band Society that’s both refreshing and inspiring. Yes, it’s about sick kids, but it’s no downer.

Griffin Gluck, left, and Octavia Spencer star in Red Band Society

It speeds along at a brisk clip, and for all the potential pitfalls — there are times when it feels so manipulative one can almost see the strings being pulled — it’s oddly, undeniably compelling.

One of the reasons is the heartfelt, sometimes poetic dialogue, which navigates the tricky line between idealism and sentimentality. The difference between children and adolescents is that children view the world with wide-open questioning eyes, while adolescents pretend to be above it all and presciently aware of everything around them. There’s a flicker of the child in every adolescent, though, and Red Band Society plays on that to the hilt. When the entitled cheerleader lights into the pediatric nurse — “You don’t scare me … you’re just some loser nurse who rides the bus” — the words cut deeper than any scalpel.

The real reason Red Band Society works, though, is the naturalistic, lived-in performances by its cast of young unknowns: Charlie Rowe as the unofficial pack leader who hides his insecurities behind a veneer of outward charm; Nolan Sotillo as the restless wanderer looking for a safe harbour; Ciara Bravo as the preternaturally gifted artist-in-the-making wrestling with an eating disorder; and Griffin Gluck as the young coma patient and Red Band Society’s voice of conscience.

Film buffs will recognize Red Band Society’s creative antecedents in a heartbeat: The Breakfast Club meets Girl, Interrupted, with a dash of Dead Poets Society thrown in for good measure. It sounds derivative, like Glee before it, but — as with Glee — the cumulative effect is something akin to a miracle.

Dave Annable (standing) and Nolan Sotillo in Red Band Society

Red Band series-creator Margaret Nagle based the story on her own early childhood experiences: Her older brother was in a coma while she was growing up, and she felt as if she had grown up in the hospital with him. Red Band Society is a story about life, not death, she told reporters earlier this summer: More than 80 per cent of pediatric patients recover, she said. Red Band Society is about coming of age and overcoming adversity.

“How do you tell a girl who needs a heart that she never really had one to begin with?” Gluck’s coma patient says in voice-over, midway through the first hour.

Exactly.

Early reviews have been mixed, but make no mistake: This small, modest, easy-to-overlook ensemble drama about adolescence and adversity has the potential to be the sleeper hit of the fall TV season. Every teardrop is a waterfall.

Red Band Society debuts Sept. 17, Fox

]]>http://o.canada.com/entertainment/television/is-steven-spielbergs-red-band-society-tvs-sleeper-hit-with-video/feed0Red Band SocietyalxstrachanRed Band Society/FoxRed Band Society/FoxEmmys 2014: Awards are ‘generally homogenous’ (with video)http://o.canada.com/entertainment/television/emmys-2014-awards-are-generally-homogenous-with-video
http://o.canada.com/entertainment/television/emmys-2014-awards-are-generally-homogenous-with-video#respondFri, 27 Jun 2014 12:52:33 +0000http://o.canada.com/?p=474609]]>Directors Guild of America president and Sons of Anarchy executive producer Paris Barclay is a fan of the Emmy voting process — to a point.

“The Emmys are generally homogenous,” Barclay told reporters, earlier this year in Los Angeles. “It’s started to change with House of Cards and things like that, but generally they fall in love with people and they stick with them until they die.

“What would be interesting to me, and I’m an Emmy voter myself, is if they actually watched everything, if that were physically possible. There were something like 3,100 episodes of television made this past season. If they said, ‘This year, I’m going to watch everything that’s eligible,’ it would blow their minds. The Emmys would be completely different.”

Emmy voters have their biases and preconceptions, as anyone has, Barclay said

“People love their 30 Rock or whatever show is du jour, and they’re stuck there. They’re not going to go over to that biker drama with the showrunner who keeps tweeting bad things about them. Not going to do it. And it doesn’t matter how great Katey Sagal or Charlie Hunnam are.”

Charlie Hunnam as Jax Teller on Sons of Anarchy

Barclay, a multiple Emmy winner whose directing career goes back to the early years of NYPD Blue, recalled a more recent time he was nominated.

“I woke up that morning and my manager had sent me a text, saying, ‘Hey, you got an Emmy nomination.’ I thought, wow! Finally.

“But it was for Glee. If it had been for Sons, I probably would have died because it would’ve been extraordinary. Certain things they’re going to love. And certain things they’re just never going to cop to.”

Television is in a good place right now, either way, Barclay said. More feature-film directors are turning to the small screen, from both the independent and Hollywood studio side.

“Taking our jobs,” Barclay said, deadpan.

]]>http://o.canada.com/entertainment/television/emmys-2014-awards-are-generally-homogenous-with-video/feed0Paris BarclayalxstrachanSons of AnarchyDirectors embrace new golden age of television (with video)http://o.canada.com/entertainment/television/directors-embrace-new-golden-age-of-television-with-video
http://o.canada.com/entertainment/television/directors-embrace-new-golden-age-of-television-with-video#respondWed, 02 Jul 2014 13:29:00 +0000http://o.canada.com/?p=466969]]>Those stylized T-shirts that say: What I Really Want to Do is Direct, may need a tweaking to: What I Really Want to Do is Direct TV.

Television directors don’t think about it much, two-time, Emmy-winning director and head of the Directors Guild of America, Paris Barclay, told reporters earlier this year — they’re too busy working. Hardly a day goes by, though, that he doesn’t hear from his feature-film friends asking about what’s happening on the small screen.

As DGA president, Barclay represents both film and TV directors. And while there are obvious similarities in the two jobs, there are stark differences, too — differences that until recently, were irreconcilable.

Flanked by fellow TV directors Alfonso Gomez-Rejon, Daniel Sackheim and Michael Dinner, among others, Barclay talked about the good, the bad and the ugly side of directing for the small screen today.

Mostly, it’s good:

Saving the Baby

“This is a damn good time to be a director in television,” Paris Barclay said. “It used to be a very, very difficult job. It used to be — how should I say it nicely? — not as much fun. There’s a creative challenge to directing that’s embraced in environments like FX. When I see other directors’ work now, I think to myself: How would I have done that? Don’t get me wrong: A good script is great. It really helps. But even if the script is not so good, we can come in and save the baby, and that’s what we do.”

Jessica Lange as Fiona, Angela Bassett as Marie on American Horror Story: Coven

Style is Everything

“You bring who you are,“ Alfonso Gomez-Rejon said, whether it’s Glee or American Horror Story. On the surface, the two programs seem completely incompatible, but Gomez-Rejon applied his own unique signature-style to both. “You have to bring your own sensibilities,” Gomez-Rejon explained. “If you try to become who you think you’re supposed to be, or adapt to a certain style, you fail. The script is what it is. The characters are who they are. You have to bring your own point of view, because that’s really all you have at the end of the day.”

Darren Criss, left, and Chris Colfer in Glee

TV Directors are Genetic Engineers

“Some people say the director’s job is a bit like that of an obstetrician,” Barclay observed. He won a pair of Emmys early in his career for NYPD Blue. More recently, he directed episodes of Glee, The Good Wife and FX’s biker series Sons of Anarchy. “First, do no harm. Deliver the baby, cut the cord and make sure it’s okay. I see it as being a little bit more like genetic engineering, though. I try to get in there while the baby is still in utero. I try to get some new genes in there, do a little splicing. And when that baby comes out, everybody’s happy. It’s the child they always expected, and they don’t even notice the fact that it’s been slightly re-engineered to my liking.”

The TV Show that Changed Everything

“Telling stories isn’t any different, whether you’re making features or television,” industry veteran Michael Dinner offered up. Dinner graduated from The Wonder Years in the early 1990s to Masters of Sex and the FX drama Justified. “The great leveller is time. I go back to Michael Mann in a way, because television was kind of cookie-cutter until they did Miami Vice. All of a sudden there was this explosion of point-of-view in television. The role of the director has become more and more important. Television’s more ambitious, more cinematic. The audience has a demand for big stories. As the director, you are responsible for whatever it takes to get there.”

Miami Vice

Conducting the Symphony

“Directing is similar to creating music,” according to Daniel Sackheim. Sackheim directed early episodes of The X-Files in Vancouver before going on to Band of Brothers for HBO, The Americans for FX and The Walking Dead for AMC. “You have a symphony orchestra filled with talented musicians, but you need a conductor to bring any sense of unity and harmony to it. Oftentimes you go into a scene that appears to work well on paper, but what seems so clear on paper doesn’t quite rise to the occasion on the day. And so you try to find a way to get that alchemy working between these disparate players. It can be something as simple as changing a line or as complicated as changing an entire scene. It’s about finding the right chemistry, and oftentimes it doesn’t happen until you’re actually there, doing the scene.”

The Brave New World of Making Mini-Movies

“It’s always the movie for me,” Barclay states. “I always want to think of it as if we’re doing something that’s really for the big screen, that’s that important and that good. And if we do anything less than that, then I say we’re making television — and that’s not what I want to do at the end of my day. I want to be in the business of making something that’s emotionally deep, cinematic and interesting, creative and challenging.”

The Walking Dead

(Screen) Size Doesn’t Matter

Today’s TV directors don’t worry that what they’re creating with such painstaking precision might be played on anything from a widescreen TV to an iPod Mini or smartphone.

]]>http://o.canada.com/entertainment/television/directors-embrace-new-golden-age-of-television-with-video/feed0GleealxstrachanAmerican Horror Story: Coven/FXGlee/FoxMiami ViceThe Walking Dead/AMCSons of Anarchy/FXTV Tuesday: Deadliest Catch turns 10http://o.canada.com/entertainment/television/tv-tuesday-deadliest-catch-turns-10
http://o.canada.com/entertainment/television/tv-tuesday-deadliest-catch-turns-10#respondTue, 29 Apr 2014 06:57:42 +0000http://o.canada.com/?p=434514]]>Deadliest Catch is about to turn 10. The waters are still deadly on the Bering Sea when Alaska king crab season opens but, as always, Deadliest Catch is more concerned about the human stories aboard deck than the elements.

Capt. Josh Harris is the son of the late fishboat captain Phil Harris, a legend in the industry who brought respect to the fishermen who risk their lives in one of the most dangerous jobs there is. The younger Harris, now co-captain of the Cornelia Marie, is determined to continue his father’s legacy and establish his own.

On a rival boat, the F/V Northwestern, fishing veteran Sig Hansen’s 18-year-old daughter is about to join the ranks as a deckhand. It’s problematic: She wants to prove herself in a field dominated by men. In a job so dangerous, though, wisdom comes with knowing what you’re capable of, what you’re not capable of, and being wise enough to know the difference.

Deadliest Catch

Fishing season has already opened when Deadliest Catch returns, but there’s a snag. Pencil-necked paper pushers in Washington, D.C., have staged a shutdown of the U.S. government and the boats are tied up in port — literally. The fleet is heavily regulated; without the necessary permits, the boats can’t sail.

The shutdown ends eventually, but precious weeks have been lost. The fleet gets a late start on the season, and where northern winters are concerned, it can have deadly consequences.

Deadliest Catch

Deadliest Catch has had many imitators since it launched in April 2005. As Tuesday’s milestone 10th season opener shows, though, there’s nothing like the original.

Deadliest Catch airs Tuesday, Discovery

Deadliest Catch

Also Watch
Human whirlwind and force-of-nature Shirley MacLaine guest-stars on Glee as a wealthy socialite who befriends Blaine (Darren Criss) during his visit to New York. It’s not Downton Abbey, but it’ll have to do. (City/Fox)

]]>http://o.canada.com/entertainment/television/tv-tuesday-deadliest-catch-turns-10/feed0Discovery ChannelalxstrachanDiscovery ChannelDiscovery ChannelDeadliest CatchTV Tuesday: Glee celebrates 100 episodes (with video)http://o.canada.com/entertainment/television/tv-tuesday-glee-celebrates-100-episodes
http://o.canada.com/entertainment/television/tv-tuesday-glee-celebrates-100-episodes#respondWed, 19 Mar 2014 13:51:38 +0000http://o.canada.com/?p=412993]]>On May 19, 2009, Glee debuted with a skip in its step and a song in its heart. That song was Don’t Stop Believin’ by Journey, and it became the anthem of musically minded social outcasts everywhere.

Though Glee’s ratings are limping and its original cast is largely gone, the show celebrates its 100th episode tonight. The instalment features past and current members of the New Directions glee club and their favourite performances.

Settle in for songs including, Keep Holding On with Mark Salling, Defying Gravity with Lea Michele, Chris Colfer and Amber Riley, and Toxic with Naya Rivera, Heather Morris and Dianna Agron. And yes, there’ll be Don’t Stop Believin.’ Would you expect anything less?

The plot of the episode is pivotal: High school president Sue Sylvester (Jane Lynch) finally shut down the glee club after years of finely crafted insults and nefarious schemes.

Next season will be Glee’s final coda, and the show has lots of time to wrap things up. The kids are moving on after Finn’s (Cory Monteith) death, plus the characters played by Jenna Ushkowitz, Darren Criss, Kevin McHale and Chord Overstreet are ready to graduate.

Off-camera, some cast members have already taken on side projects. Lynch gamely hosts Hollywood Game Night, Riley won last season of Dancing With the Stars, and Michele just released her album Louder.

The show’s legacy, though, will be its willingness to tackle tough subjects like bullying and homophobia and celebrate the arts, particularly music. And that’s as fine a reason as any to believe.

You guys, Pretty Little Liars’ season finale will be totes amazeballs. The girls get more answers about who’s been tormenting them, and hopefully find out what really happened to Alison DiLaurentis. (M3)

]]>http://o.canada.com/entertainment/television/tv-tuesday-glee-celebrates-100-episodes/feed0313GLEE_Ep313-Sc31_181mhank2012TV Tuesday: Cold Water Cowboys debut makes big splashhttp://o.canada.com/entertainment/tv-tuesday-cold-water-cowboys-makes-big-splash-with-debut
http://o.canada.com/entertainment/tv-tuesday-cold-water-cowboys-makes-big-splash-with-debut#respondTue, 04 Mar 2014 07:57:26 +0000http://o.canada.com/?p=403904]]>Cold Water Cowboys isn’t just a catchy title. The homegrown docu-reality series about Newfoundland fishing captains testing their nerve against high seas and gale-force winds in the Atlantic fishery left harbour last week, garnering some of the highest first-week ratings in Discovery Canada’s history.

In so doing, Cold Water Cowboys joined a select group of outdoor, working-class-hero reality epics like Deadliest Catch, Ice Road Truckers and Ice Pilots NWT, programs that, in the words of original Deadliest Catch producer Thom Beers, appeal to a wide audience precisely because they’re about real, hard-working people, men and women who knowingly put themselves in harm’s way and suffer real hardship to put food on the table for their families.

Beers said that programs like Deadliest Catch and, by extension, Cold Water Cowboys are an emotional counterweight to stories of city slickers on Wall Street — or Bay Street, if you prefer — who make money off the backs of other people’s hard work.

Paul Tiller and his crew prove their mettle on v, which attracted a huge audience in its debut week.

That may be a highfalutin’ concept for a show about fishboat captains, but it makes sense. Rapid advances in camera technology — the GoPro camera just might just be the most influential development in film and TV production since the invention of the Steadicam — have made it possible to follow tough, hard-working folks to the very gates of hell, without getting in their way or interfering with their work.

Knowing that Newfoundland fishing crews face rough seas, busted equipment — FUBAR, as they say — and their own emotional insecurities and personality conflicts, all the while dealing with pack ice and Titanic-sized icebergs, is one thing. Actually seeing it, in the comfort of one’s family home, is quite another.

The footage in programs like Cold Water Cowboys is deliberately manipulated and edited to tell a story. Drama is conflict, after all. These are not documentaries but reality series.

PHOTO: DiscoveryConway Caines and crew are as tough as they need to be

Even so, some things are impossible to fake. The stakes are real. Things can and do go wrong on the high sea. And when they do, there’s not much a TV film crew can do about it. Cold Water Cowboys may be a TV show, but at its heart it’s about real life. The fact that so many — more than a million viewers, according to Discovery Canada — tuned in last week is one of the still-young TV year’s earliest feel-good stories.

Watching TV can be a little like casting a net into the sea — one never knows what one will find. Occasionally, though, one lands something good. Cold Water Cowboys is one of the good ones.

Also Watch

• The geeks may yet inherit the earth, but they’ve had to wait a while. Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. returns with its first new episode since Feb. 4, with the hotly anticipated debut of Bill Paxton as Agent John Garrett. Hotly anticipated by the Comic-Con crowd, that is. (Tues. 8 p.m. ET/PT, 9 p.m. MT, CTV/ ABC, 7 p.m. CT, CFCF)

• Graduation looms once again on Glee, as Tina, Blaine and Sam stage a seniors-only lock-in at school, so they can savour one last chance to hang out together. But then Becky horns in on their private moment and, well, you know. Demi Lovato, Adam Lambert and Dot Marie Jones guest star. (Tues. 8 p.m., ET/PT, 10 p.m. MT, CITY/FOX, 7 p.m. CT, CJNT)

The traditional TV year, in which pilot episodes are made in March, announced in May and premiered in September, has gone the way of big-box TV sets and rabbit ear antennas, Reilly said.

Audience habits have changed to the point where the old system, which was designed for a three-network universe, no longer works.

Reilly said that, contrary to some news reports, TV viewing is up over last year, in some cases sharply.

The old model of watching TV, in which advertisers bought advertising space based on the nightly viewer ratings, no longer applies.

“Ratings now count for a fraction of the TV-viewing universe,” Reilly said.

TV has evolved to the point where viewers watch the shows they want to see, when they want to see them, how they want to see them, and not when a broadcast network decides to air that show.

Reilly said his network has 10 shows in production at any given moment.

Reilly cited Glee as an example. Glee’s average weekly U.S. audience jumps to 10 million viewers from 6.6 million, once online streaming, PVR-viewing and VOD or viewing-on-demand are taken into consideration.

Even a relatively new series like the Golden Globe Award-winning comedy Brooklyn Nine-Nine sees its audience jump to nine million viewers from five million once the extra numbers are factored into the equation.

Glee airs in Canada on Global TV; Brooklyn Nine-Nine airs on City.

Reilly said his network has 10 shows in production at any given moment. At one point late last year, Fox had 42 programs in production.

The Sixth Sense filmmaker M. Night Shyamalan’s small-town thriller Wayward Pines is currently shooting the fifth of a projected 10 episodes in Agassiz, B.C., Reilly noted. Wayward Pines, which will air when Reilly and Shyamalan feel it’s ready and not when the traditional TV season slots it in, is a blueprint for the future, not a one-off experiment, Reilly said.

We will be way ahead of everyone else.”

The first-year gothic thriller Sleepy Hollow, which would ordinarily begin production on a second season in July, will start again in March, Reilly said, and could be ready to air as early as midsummer.

“We will be way ahead of everyone else.”,” Reilly said. The way of the future is more series, with shorter episode runs that will air year-round.

Fox’s big-budget, 12-episode resurrection of the real-time thriller 24, 24: Live Another Day, will premiere on May 5, for example, and air throughout June and July, traditionally a slow time of the TV year.

The 24 revamp begins shooting in London, England, in two weeks, with Kiefer Sutherland and Mary Lynn Rajskub returning in the roles they played for more than six years, from 2003 to 2010.

Reilly said future Fox series will likely last 10 to 13 episodes, rather than the traditional 22 episodes. The Kevin Bacon thriller The Following, for example, aired just 15 episodes in its first season. It will return for a second season, also 15 episodes, beginning Jan. 19. The Following airs on CTV in Canada.

Reilly said the quality of cable dramas like Mad Men, Breaking Bad and Homeland proves high-calibre writers, actors and directors do their best work when they’re not under pressure to churn out episodic TV week after week for months at a time, only to have it start all over again the next season.

“When you slow down the conveyor belt, the quality goes up,” Reilly said. “I’m not making a declaration about where others should go or what other networks should do. I’m just talking about what works for us. We’re trying to make it more talent friendly, that’s all.

“We can’t be in the one-size-fits-all business. That’s not the way the audience watches TV anymore. Nobody pays attention to pilot season or sweeps season. They just want to see a good show.

“My life would be easier if we could just plug in 22 (episodes) and be done with it. But in the long run, I don’t think that’s best for either the show or the audience. This is TV in 2014.”

]]>http://o.canada.com/entertainment/television/tca-fox-boss-kevin-reilly-scraps-tv-pilots/feed0Kevin Reilly, Fox's chairman of entertainment, answers questions from television criticsalxstrachanKevin Reilly, Chairman of Entertainment, Fox Broadcasting CompanyFoxTV 2014 Midseason Preview: 10 early shows to watch (with video)http://o.canada.com/entertainment/television/tv-2014-midseason-preview-10-early-shows-to-watch-with-video
http://o.canada.com/entertainment/television/tv-2014-midseason-preview-10-early-shows-to-watch-with-video#respondThu, 05 Dec 2013 16:47:23 +0000http://o.canada.com/?p=362873]]>January is the new September, when it comes to our expectations concerning TV viewing. The weather outside is frightful, but the TV can be delightful. If the fall TV season teaches anything, it’s that we like our returning favourites best of all.

The same is true for midseason..

It used to be that midseason was a time for replacements, bench players hastily pressed into the starting lineup to shore up a losing team. Much has changed, though, since the days when a handful of networks dominated the broadcast landscape. An unintended side effect of the proliferation of cable channels is that TV is increasingly becoming a year-round experience. Ten years from now, even the term “midseason” may seem outdated.

PHOTO: PBSMichelle Dockery as Lady Mary in Downton Abbey

The most-talked about shows from the past year were, almost without exception, pay-TV, premium cable and web-streamed dramas like Breaking Bad, Mad Men, Game of Thrones, House of Cards and Orange is the New Black. The mainstream broadcast networks still reach into every home, but technology is playing an ever-growing role in everyday lives.

Turn, turn, turn — to every TV there is a season

Midseason crackles with exciting returns and new offerings

The DVR, or digital video recorder, has supplanted the remote as the must-have entertainment toy. In a busy world, where everyone is pressed for time, more viewers are choosing to watch what they want, when they want, and not when the networks decide.

Here, then, from a midseason buffet of dozens of new offerings and returning favourites, are 10 picks that, either by past reputation or positive early signs, look DVR-worthy.

1. Downton Abbey (Jan. 5, PBS)

PHOTO: PBSMichelle Dockery, centre, in Downton Abbey

Sadness lingers. When Downton devotees last tuned in, Michelle Dockery’s Lady Mary was left reeling, a young mother suddenly widowed, with a baby to look after. The new season starts six months after Matthew Crawley’s untimely death, with Mary still grieving. Life goes on, though. It’s the Roaring Twenties, and Mary is about to step out into the world again, with all that entails. Period drama has rarely been this compelling, which is why Downton Abbey has touched the popular nerve.

TV’s most cerebral, set-in-present-day western, returns with Timothy Olyphant’s Raylan Givens locking horns once again with Walton Goggins’ unrepentant bad-boy Boyd Crowther, but this time there’s an added complication — for both. A crime family from Florida, the Crowes, have cast their beady eyes over Crowther’s lucrative moonshine-’n-recreational-pharmaceutical business. The late, legendary novelist Elmore Leonard reckoned, shortly before his death, that Justified was one of his finest achievements, thanks in no small part to Olyphant, Goggins and Justified’s Canadian showrunner, Graham Yost. Shoot-’em-ups don’t come much more intelligent or adult than this.

3. Intelligence (Jan. 7, CTV, CBS)

PHOTO: CBSJosh Holloway and Meghan Ory

Intelligence is a high-octane sci-fi conspiracy thriller, in which an intelligence operative is wired to the global information grid via a surgically implanted super-computer chip in his brain. Yes, it sounds derivative, but it’s hard to argue with the pedigree cast. Josh Holloway, Sawyer on Lost, plays the intelligence operative, Gabriel. Marg Helgenberger, late of CSI, plays his supervisor, Lillian Strand, and Victoria, B.C. native Meghan Ory, Ruby and Red Riding Hood from Once Upon a Time, plays his Secret Service protector and potential love interest Riley Neal.

4. Crisis (Jan. 8, City, NBC)

PHOTO: NBCDermot Mulroney as Thomas Gibson

A behind-the-scenes crisis — production was halted in November, reportedly to work out problems with later-in-the-season scripts — doesn’t take away from the intriguing premise, about a busload of children from an elite Washington, D.C. school kidnapped by political extremists, or from the top-level cast. Gillian Anderson, Dermot Mulroney, Rachael Taylor and Canadian Max Martini headline a story conceived by Rand Ravich, writer-director of the feature film The Astronaut’s Wife, starring Johnny Depp and Charlize Theron. The opener was directed by veteran Australian filmmaker Phillip Noyce, who counts Dead Calm, starring a then-unknown Nicole Kidman, among his list of credits. As with all series of this type, a strong pilot doesn’t always mean a strong series. The setup certainly looks promising, though.

5. True Detective (Jan. 12, HBO)

PHOTO: HBOWoody Harrelson, Matthew McConaughey

Matthew McConaughey and Woody Harrelson play Louisiana detectives whose career paths collide when they’re assigned a murder case that’s remained unsolved for 17 years. It appears the killer may be on the loose once more, and McConaughey and Harrelson’s sleuths must track the killer down before he, or she, reverts to old habits. True Detective may sound on the face of it, to be ordinary and trite, like any number of other police procedurals you can name. There are a number of differences, though. True Detective is set in the Deep South, in Louisiana bayou country, an unusual location for mysteries of this type. And it’s from HBO, home of Treme and Boardwalk Empire. HBO doesn’t do trite.

6. Sherlock (Jan. 19, PBS)

PHOTO: PBSBenedict Cumberbatch as Sherlock Holmes and Martin Freeman as Dr. John Watson

Sherlock Holmes is very much alive and well, and the game is afoot once more. Benedict Cumberbatch breathes new life into Holmes in The Empty Hearse, the opening act of Sherlock’s third season, putting to rest any suggestion that the world’s most famous detective perished at the end of last season’s cleverly titled finale, The Reichenbach Fall. This post-modern version of Sherlock, conceived by Doctor Who head writer Steven Moffat, is witty, audacious and intelligent. It’s enough to give remakes a good name, which is saying a lot. It’s also, along with the return of Game of Thrones, The Walking Dead and Neil deGrasse Tyson’s re-imagining of Carl Sagan’s classic science series Cosmos, one of the new year’s more eagerly anticipated TV returns.

Yes, it’s yet another reality show purloined from the wellspring of creative imagination that is U.S. network TV. As last summer’s Amazing Race Canada showed, though, reality-TV redos don’t have to be low-end, lowbrow imitations, made on the fly, with a Canadian accent. The original MasterChef is one of TV’s more satisfying reality-competition shows — it’s about cooking, after all — so why not give MasterChef Canada the benefit of the early doubt? The new, home-cooked version will air its third episode (the first elimination episode) after the Super Bowl, which, if nothing else, should give it a jump-start in the ratings. The judges are Michael Bonacini, co-founder of Ontario’s Oliver & Bonacini Restaurants; Alvin Leung, a self-taught Michelin-starred chef and the chef behind the classic-modern Chinese eatery Bo; and Claudio Aprile, owner of Toronto’s Origin chain of restaurants and Orderfire Restaurant Group. No shouting from Gordon Ramsay here.

8. A Season Like No Other (Jan. 23, CBC)

PHOTO: CBCNHL players followed 24/7 in the seven-part CBC docuseries A Season Like No Other

Behind-the-scenes documentary series are all the rage right now in sports TV, whether it’s Being Liverpool, a look at Liverpool FC at the start of Brendan Rogers’ inaugural season at the helm of the world’s most famous soccer club, or HBO’s fine 24/7 documentary look at long-standing NHL rivalries, such as the New York Rangers and Philadelphia Flyers and, most recently, the Toronto Maple Leafs and Detroit Red Wings. A Season Like No Other, a seven-part series made for CBC and NBC with the cooperation of both the NHL and the NHL Players Association, is much the same, only different. Cameras follow a dozen of the league‘s top players, on and off the ice, during the ongoing season, including the outdoor stadium games and the NHL Heritage Classic. Yes, A Season Like No Other is strictly for hockey fans, but then if you followed the hysteria over the just-signed NHL TV deal, you could be forgiven for thinking that includes just about everyone.

9. Rake (Jan. 23, Global, Fox)

PHOTO: FoxGreg Kinnear in Rake

Having adapted numerous series from the U.K., and U.S. TV is now copying the Aussies. Rake, a character-driven courtroom drama starring Greg Kinnear as ethically challenged criminal defence lawyer Keegan Deane, is adapted from the Australian award-winning drama of the same name. Keegan combines ruthless charm and a keen grasp of the law with wanton disregard for civility and personal morals. In short, he’s a wolf in lawyer’s clothing, trying to do good in a bad world, to save his soul and get a better table at the restaurant. The formulae of hard-to-like anti-hero worked for House, and it might work for Rake. The jury is out; a verdict is expected by February.

10. The Americans (Feb. 5, FX Canada)

PHOTO: FXKeri Russell as Elizabeth Jennings

Homegrown screenwriter Graham Yost, son of the late, great TVO movie host and lifelong cinema buff Elwy Yost, has placed two series on the must-see DVR list (Justified, back in January, is the other). The Americans, featuring Keri Russell and Matthew Rhys as Soviet sleeper agents living a seemingly idyllic, all-American life in Washington suburbia during the 1980s’ Reagan era, ended its first season on a chilling note: Their teenage daughter Paige, as American as apple pie and Family Ties reruns, found a gun and her mom’s escape kit tucked away in the family closet, and now expects the worst of her parents. She faces a dilemma as the new season begins: Turn her parents in, or cover for them and in so doing become a potential co-conspirator and de facto sleeper agent herself. Those are not questions any 13-year-old should have to face. The Americans won the Television Critics Association Award for outstanding new series, this past summer, and it’s easy to see why.

***

These are just 10 choices.

There are bound to be more — and more than likely one or two that made the list and don’t belong, despite the hype and initial promise.

Game of Thrones didn’t make the list because it won’t be back until April. With TV’s year-round calendar, March and April are fast becoming a new season in their own right.

Another anticipated return, 24’s filmed-in-London, U.K. sequel, 24: Live Another Day, will take its bow in May.

PHOTO: CBSJosh Holloway, left, and Meghan Ory in Intelligence

Returning favourites of note include HBO’s Girls and Showtime’s House of Lies, returning Jan. 12; American Idol, back for its 13th season — lucky 13? — on Jan. 15, on CTV and Fox; The Voice, which returns with Usher and Shakira filling in once again for CeeLo Green and Christina Aguilera on Feb. 24, on CTV and NBC; Glee, back Feb. 25 on Global and Fox; and AMC’s much talked-about, and obsessed-over The Walking Dead, back on Feb. 9.

]]>http://o.canada.com/entertainment/television/tv-2014-midseason-preview-10-early-shows-to-watch-with-video/feed0DVR No.9 Rake2alxstrachanDownton AbbeyDownton AbbeyJustifiedIntelligenceCrisisTrue DetectiveSherlockMasterChef CanadaA Season Like No OtherRakeThe AmericansIntelligenceGoogle’s top 10 most searched Canadians of the yearhttp://o.canada.com/technology/internet/googles-top-10-most-searched-canadians-of-the-year
http://o.canada.com/technology/internet/googles-top-10-most-searched-canadians-of-the-year#commentsTue, 17 Dec 2013 14:07:25 +0000http://o.canada.com/?p=369983]]>Google released its annual Zeitgeist report Tuesday, collating the top searches of the year.

In addition to a tear-jerking video, the search company’s Zeitgeist — German for “spirit of the times” — also includes some country-specific results.

At the top of the list is the People’s Mayor, Rob Ford, whose exploits in and out of Toronto City Hall made international headlines over the past year.

The late Glee star Cory Monteith is the second-most searched Canadian, likely due to his international fanbase of Gleeks.

The list of the most-searched Canadian politicians holds some surprises, at least in terms of popularity.

At the top of the list is Liberal dauphin Justin Trudeau, whose rise to leader of the party in April and a series of provocative statements — some better received than others — have kept him in the news.

The second-most searched politician in 2013 was Prime Minister Stephen Harper, whose difficult year in office has been punctuated by embarrassing revelations about some of his appointed senators and members of his office. Unsurprisingly, Harper is closely followed on the Zeitgeist by senators Mike Duffy and Pamela Wallin. Failed Liberal leadership candidate Marc Garneau rounds out the top 10. (Official Opposition leader Tom Mulcair is 10th on the list. Ouch.)

Related Articles

]]>http://o.canada.com/technology/internet/googles-top-10-most-searched-canadians-of-the-year/feed1GoogleishmaeldaroTV Thursday: The Great Martian War a deft trip back in timehttp://o.canada.com/entertainment/television/tv-thursday-the-great-martian-war-a-deft-trip-back-in-time
http://o.canada.com/entertainment/television/tv-thursday-the-great-martian-war-a-deft-trip-back-in-time#respondThu, 05 Dec 2013 07:43:53 +0000http://o.canada.com/?p=360450]]>

PHOTO: HistoryThe Great Martian War

“What if?” Literary scholars say that question has driven science fiction since time immemorial, and the made-for-TV movie The Great Martian War poses a doozy: What if Mars invaded Earth in 1913?

The Great Martian War isn’t a sci-fi B picture exactly. It airs on History and has been carefully crafted to look, sound and feel like a historical documentary, complete with grainy archival footage, witness testimony from aging survivors and the analysis and deconstruction of present-day experts.

The Great Martian War combines computer-generated images of alien invaders and film footage from the First World War to create the illusion that a Martian invasion actually happened. Think of it as Orson Welles’s The War of the Worlds crossed with Woody Allen’s Zelig, dressed up as a historical documentary, complete with portentous narration (“A century ago these fields were the bloody arena for the most terrible conflict in human history …”) and brooding, “important” background music.

Another elderly witness recalls, in a shaking, halting voice, “There was life beyond our planet! It went against everything I was raised to believe … An entire generation of young men, all of them vanished.”

Whether The Great Martian War is for you will depend a lot on your sensibilities. More serious-minded viewers may be offended that actual First World War film footage of a real, bloody conflict involving actual living, breathing people has been manipulated for use in a sci-fi pulp adventure.

Many viewers, though — most, perhaps — will be drawn in by the compelling way The Great Martian War poses its central mystery. It’s silly, sure, yet strangely addictive. It uses every filmmaking trick in the history documentarian’s playbook, from grainy archival footage to the testimony of present-day experts such as “war historian and broadcaster” Duncan Mitchell Myers, who explains how an unexplained explosion in the middle of Germany’s Black Forest triggered a rush to war.

At two hours, The Great Martian War seems repetitive at times, a little like a one-joke comedy stretched too long. It’s cleverly put together, though, with small, welcome touches like war vet Hughie Logan “of Calgary, Canada” — “filmed in 1987,” according to the caption — who recalls that going to war meant leaving loved ones behind at home to ponder his fate on the battlefield.

The Great Martian War isn’t mere pulp entertainment. The centenary commemorations of the First World War — the actual war — are just around the corner. In an indirect, almost offhand way, The Great Martian War seems calculated to appeal to a younger generation raised to believe that historical documentaries are tedious and uninspiring.

The Great Martian War may remind some moviegoers of the 2004 Gwyneth Paltrow film Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow, which was filmed in sepia tones and set in an alternative 1939. There’s an almost heedless energy to the way The Great Martian War tells its story. It’s a novelty, but an inventive and surprisingly engaging novelty. Provided, that is, one doesn’t take it too seriously. It’s not Ken Burns, after all. (9 ET/PT, 11 CT, 10 MT, History)

Three to See

• If Sheldon Cooper were a real person, and if The Great Martian War were based on real events, Sheldon would no doubt be a true believer. Fiction rules his world, though. On a new episode of The Big Bang Theory called The Discovery Dissipation, Sheldon (Jim Parsons) spirals into depression after his recent contribution to science is disproven as bunk. (CTV, CBS, 8 ET/PT, 9 MT, 7 CT)

• Nathan’s (Will Arnett) mid-life fears are realized on The Millers, as he learns his sister was their father’s favourite all along. He handles the revelation with typical grace and maturity, by filling his parents in on some of his sister’s childhood secrets. Classy to the end … (Global, CBS, 8:30 ET/PT, 9:30 MT, 7:30 CT)

• Glee pulls off a nifty trick of its own, with a Christmas episode, Previously Unaired Christmas, that host Sue Sylvester (Jane Lynch) insists was pulled from the air last year. It’s a holiday special, in which the New Directions show chorus stages on a Nativity musical, with all the attendant controversy and hassle. Just like Christmas itself. (Global, Fox, 9 ET/PT, 10 MT, 8 CT)

]]>http://o.canada.com/entertainment/television/tv-thursday-the-great-martian-war-a-deft-trip-back-in-time/feed0The Great Martian WaralxstrachanThe Great Martian WarTV Wednesday: Arrow episode introduces The Flashhttp://o.canada.com/entertainment/television/tv-wednesday-arrow-episode-introduces-the-flash
http://o.canada.com/entertainment/television/tv-wednesday-arrow-episode-introduces-the-flash#respondWed, 04 Dec 2013 07:44:42 +0000http://o.canada.com/?p=359909]]>Arrow has hit the mark in its second season. With its likable characters, attractive and brisk pace — exciting, but not violent — the made-in-Vancouver superhero thriller has evolved into a crossover hit with mainstream audiences, here in Canada anyway, where it airs on a proper network.

In the U.S., where Arrow airs on the fly-by-night CW network, it manages to stay airborne on the strength of a small but loyal core of younger viewers — the Comic-Con crowd.

It’s here at home, though, that Arrow has struck a popular nerve. It’s landed in the Top 30 virtually every week since its since season debut in October. More than 1.2 million Canadians watched the Nov. 13 episode. That’s a remarkable feat for a glorified comic-book story that, if it stayed true to its origins, would only appeal to a select few.

PHOTO: The CWStephen Amell, left, and Grant Gustin in Arrow

Wednesday’s episode, The Scientist, features the first appearance by Dr. Barry Allen, known to followers of the Green Arrow universe as The Flash but who first appears in his day-job guise of police forensic scientist, called in as a consultant when a seemingly impossible break-in at a high-tech scientific research facility leaves the local plods scratching their heads.

Glee devotees will recognize the actor who plays Allen in a heartbeat: It’s Broadway star Grant Gustin, who plays Sebastian Smythe, former lead singer of the Dalton Academy Warblers and a rival for Blaine’s affections, in Glee.

PHOTO: The CWArrow

Arrow has wide appeal, in part because of its slightly skewed, off-centre take on superheroes. When Allen is introduced, for example, he comes across more as a clumsy nerd than a superhero-in-waiting.

Arrow dials it back, too, on the traditional pseudo-science and super-human strengths that sink so many bigger, louder superhero dramas. While it makes little effort to be realistic, it’s at least plausible, and that appeals to casual viewers.

The real reason Arrow finds its target, though, is Stephen Amell in the make-or-break role of billionaire industrialist and reluctant hero Oliver Queen. In less steady hands, the role of a solid citizen by day and dedicated crimefighter by night might seem like a tired cliché.

PHOTO: The CWArrow

Amell, a Toronto native, alum of the late, lamented Rent-a-Goalie and a 2007 Gemini winner for the tech thriller ReGenesis, doesn’t skate by on rugged good looks alone. Superheroes are often driven by dark pasts — a murdered parent, a terrible injustice, an unhappy childhood accident — and the role of superhero can be deceptively difficult for an actor. If there’s no “there” there, comic-book fans get bored in a hurry and mainstream viewers find little of interest that would make them want to watch. Movies can get by on over-the-top special effects and eye-filling action sequences, but TV dramas require a week-to-week emotional commitment on the part of the viewer. Either you like the characters, and want to spend more time with them, or you don’t.

PHOTO: The CWArrow

Arrow’s success is down to Amell, and to a solid supporting cast that includes veteran character actors Susanna Thompson and Paul Blackthorne in key roles, along with horror queen Katie Cassidy, who finally appears to have landed in a series with staying power. Arrow is worthy. (8 ET/PT, 9 MT, 7 CT, CTV/The CW)

Three to See

• The parental bond — specifically, mothers and their daughters — has become a recurring theme on Survivor: Blood vs. Water in recent weeks, as in last week’s hour when previous player Laura Morett, from Survivor: Samoa, vowed to hang on for dear life during an endurance challenge to prove to her daughter, fellow castaway Ciera Eastin, that mental strength comes from within and doesn’t necessarily have anything to do with age. This season of Survivor, which pits returning players against their loved ones, has its detractors. It’s also had a surprising number of life lessons, though. Wednesday’s episode features a balancing act, in more ways than one. (Global, CBS, 8 ET/PT, 9 MT, 7 CT)

• Mike (Mikey) McBryan takes lessons in Arctic survival in the high-flying Ice Pilots NWT, which is just as well. It’s a big world out there, after all, and the harsh reality is that one of those big boats can come down at any time. Being an overnight TV star is nice and all, but it don’t mean diddly if you were to find yourself down in the tundra, with just a busted plane and a pack of starving wolves for company. (History, 10 ET/7 PT, 11 MT, 8 CT)

• Yes, it’s a little early to be talking Christmas, but at least Saturday Night Live had the good grace to wait until December. With any luck, the self-explanatory clip show SNL Christmas will feature such past classic Christmas sketches as the lost ending to It’s a Wonderful Life and Paul McCartney’s show-closing piano rendition of Wonderful Christmastime — this, after Martin Short berates him for not playing a single note accurately on the triangle. (Global, NBC, 9 ET/PT, 7 MT, 8 CT)

]]>http://o.canada.com/entertainment/television/tv-wednesday-arrow-episode-introduces-the-flash/feed0ArrowalxstrachanArrowArrowArrowArrowTV Thursday: Futurama says goodbye with series finalehttp://o.canada.com/entertainment/television/tv-thursday-futurama-says-goodbye-with-series-finale
http://o.canada.com/entertainment/television/tv-thursday-futurama-says-goodbye-with-series-finale#commentsThu, 28 Nov 2013 07:36:37 +0000http://o.canada.com/?p=355836]]>In seven seasons stretched over 14 years and more than 120 episodes, the time-bending, futuristic sci-fi ’toon Futurama is about to disappear into the TV void that is late-night reruns and DVD boxed sets.

Futurama’s finale, titled — cue ironic sound effect — Meanwhile, aired earlier in the year on Comedy Central. It airs in Canada for the first time Dec. 5 on Teletoon. (In tonight’s episode, titled Stench and Stenchibility and your penultimate chance to watch the show, Zoidberg meets the love of his life.)

PHOTO: TeletoonFuturama

The show will be missed.

For while Futurama is science fiction, was cancelled once before — in 2003 — and is the focus of renewed efforts to revive it, this does look like the end. The Simpsons will end its present season with a Futurama crossover in May. After that, Futurama’s fate rests in destiny’s hands.

It has already made TV history of a kind.

Not many programs can vanish for seven years, only to return as popular and beloved as ever — unless they’re named Doctor Who.

During its early years on Fox, and even more so during its recent four-year run on Comedy Central, Futurama managed to delight and amuse with screwy parodies, send-ups and tongue-in-cheek homages like T.: The Terrestrial, Game of Tones, The Bots and Bees, A Farewell to Arms, Fun on a Bun, 2-D Blacktop, Möbius Dick, Fry am the Egg Man, Silence of the Clamps and the Emmy and Writers Guild of America Award-winning Godfellas and The Prisoner of Benda.

The finale’s story, like all good finales, is disarmingly simple. After years of being stranded 1,000 years into the future, shy service delivery clerk Philip J. Fry (Billy West) finally works up the nerve to ask Leela (Katey Sagal) to marry him. Spoiler alert: If she answered ‘No,’ it wouldn’t be much of a series finale.

Meanwhile, back in the lab, Professor Farnsworth (also voiced by West) comes up with a new contraption, the Time Button, designed to alter the space-time continuum — which, unlike some of the Professor’s other inventions, does what it’s intended to do, with unintended side effects.

Then again, Futurama always did operate in an alternate universe from other animated ’toons aimed at adults.

It sprang to life from the fertile, creative imagination of Simpsons creator Matt Groening, and while it wasn’t a strict spinoff, it shared many of that classic series’ signature touches, from its curious mixture of cynicism and starry-eyed hope to its snappy one-liners and tart comebacks.

PHOTO: TeletoonFuturama

Futurama may be set in the distant future, 1,000 years from now, but its stories are firmly grounded in the here and now. Futurama’s themes touch on everything from environmental activism and climate change to where to find a decent pizza at three in the morning, and why something as simple as changing the clocks is still a hassle 1,000 years from now.

As with The Simpsons, Fry, Leela, the Professor, Dr. Zoidberg and others are chiefly identifiable by one overriding physical characteristic: They all have overbites and hardly any chins. Man or woman, humanoid or alien, it didn’t matter: Like Bart, Homer and Marge before them, the wacky and wonderful characters who inhabit Futurama’s universe swim in the same shallow end of the gene pool.

Fear not. Despite its occasionally acid wit and sharp barbs, Futurama is still, at its best, a ’toon the whole family can enjoy without the parents having to lunge for the remote. This isn’t South Park. Futurama’s finale is a delight, and will warm the heart of even the coldest sci-fi cynic. (Teletoon, 9:30 p.m. ET/PT, 10:30 p.m. MT, 11:30 p.m. CT)

Three to See

• Here’s one holiday tradition almost anyone can get behind — or beside, at any rate: The National Dog Show, where the American Kennel Club chooses the purebreds that will compete early next year at the prestigious Westminster Kennel Club show in New York. Former Seinfeld J. Peterman boss-man and original Dancing with the Stars star John O’Hurley is once again the host. Dog aficionados, please note: This year’s field has been expanded to include the Portuguese podengo pequeno for the first time. Now you know. (NBC, noon ET/PT, 1 p.m. MT, 2 p.m. CT)

• Glee fans, a.k.a. Gleeks, should know two things about Thursday’s episode going in. First, it’s a new episode, not a rerun, unlike most of the night’s dramas and comedies. Second, Sue Sylvester (Jane Lynch) finally reveals the story behind her trademark track suit, and gets uncharacteristically weepy-eyed with nostalgia. It may not be a “very special episode” per se, but it’s a big deal for Glee fans. (Global, Fox, 9 p.m. ET/PT, 10 p.m. MT, 8 p.m. CT)

Amber Riley, the 27-year-old singer-songwriter who plays Glee’s brassy soul-singer Mercedes Jones, is poised to win the 17th season of Dancing with the Stars. The final performance program is Monday; this season’s winner will be named in a two-hour live broadcast Tuesday.

PHOTO: ABCDerek Hough, left, with Amber Riley

Riley is just one of four contestants still standing after 10 weeks of gruelling physical routines and a set of dance requirements that runs the full range of the ballroom oeuvre, from rumba and cha cha to the Viennese waltz and Argentine tango.

The other contestants still standing are Blue Collar Comedy frontman Bill Engvall, the self-styled Redneck Dancing King; High School Musical actor-dancer and occasional singer-songwriter Corbin Bleu; and Jack Osbourne, of the Osbourne clan, who was diagnosed last year with relapsing multiple sclerosis and who, judging from the evidence in Dancing, is completely reformed from his carefree Osbournes’ days.

PHOTO: ABCDerek Hough, left, with Amber Riley

Riley, though, has been in a class of her own in recent weeks alongside Dancing partner Derek Hough. Riley and Hough scored a near perfect 39 points from the four judges in last week’s semifinal jazz dance to Bruno Mars’s Locked Out of Heaven, a performance that prompted Dancing’s toughest taskmaster, Bruno Tonioli, to shower her with praise (“Just incredible, totally fierce, constantly surprising — the sync was out of this world; your versatility is astonishing”).

PHOTO: ABCAmber Riley

Dancing has struggled in the ratings this season, compared to past years — perhaps the novelty is wearing thin after 17 cycles — but Riley is taking the challenge as seriously as anything she’s done in her career, including learning the complex group dance numbers during her early years on Glee. It’s not enough to dance to the music, she has said in interviews: One has to feel the music.

PHOTO: ABCAmber Riley, front, dances with Derek Hough

Former Dancing professional Maks Chmerkovskiy, a guest judge last week, gave Riley high praise indeed when he likened her performance to something the legendary Bob Fosse might have choreographed, if he were choreographing for a modern-day audience.

“It looks like it comes easy to you,” Chmerkovskiy told her — which, coming from one dancer to another, is saying a lot.

PHOTO: ABCDerek Hough, left, with Amber Riley

More importantly, where her Dancing prospects are concerned, she’s likable, popular and easy to root for. That matters because, when the season’s winner is decided, it’s the audience watching at home who will do the deciding, and not the judges. Riley has more than a million followers on Twitter, not just because of her associations with Glee and Dancing with the Stars but for honest, down-home observations like: “Everyone in Los Angeles needs to retake driver’s ed. That drive home was bananas. Thank GOD I’m safe. Sheesh,” and, “Oh, and STOP texting and driving. It’s stupid. K bye.”

High School Musical’s Bleu has the benefit of professional dance training — Riley’s professional background is more tailored to song than dance — so she’s not quite the ringer some may expect.

PHOTO: ABCAmber Riley, left, and Derek Hough

It helps, too, that her Dancing pro partner and lead choreographer Hough has taken home more Mirror Ball trophies over the years than any other Dancing pro.

It doesn’t mean Riley is a lock to win, of course. Anything can happen in reality-TV competitions, especially when the fickle audience vote is factored into the equation.

PHOTO: ABCDerek Hough, left, with Amber Riley

It does mean that Dancing’s audience will see a credible, even uplifting performance Monday, though. That isn’t always the case in reality TV. (CTV Two, ABC, 8 ET/PT, 9 MT)

Three to See

• Murdoch Mysteries, not one to rest on its laurels after seven seasons and 85 episodes of wooing fiercely loyal viewers, pulls off a nifty stunt in Monday’s outing — a crossover-of-sorts with Republic of Doyle. The poisoning of an antiquities dealer in Toronto leads Det. Murdoch (Yannick Bisson) to Newfoundland, where he meets a local character who goes by the name of Jacob Doyle, look-alike ancestor of present-day P.I. Jake Doyle. The physical resemblance is remarkable, perhaps because they’re played by the same actor, Allan Hawco. (CBC, 8 ET/PT)

• Cracked ends its second season with Det. Black (David Sutcliffe) and criminal profiler Clara Malone (Brooke Nevin) assessing the mental state of a young schizophrenic who claims to hear the voice of devil — this, after he’s found with the murder weapon in the killing of a much-disliked tenement property manager. Cracked has been paired with the better established, more popular Murdoch Mysteries for much of the season, with mixed effect in the ratings. A decision on whether Cracked will return for a third season will be made in the coming weeks. (CBC, 9 ET/PT)

• Sleepy Hollow pays homage to a classic sub-genre of horror literature — the haunted-house story — in an episode in which Ichabod (Tom Mison) and Abbie (Nicole Beharie) stumble across a colonial house in their search for someone who’s gone missing, a house which harbours dark secrets from Ichabod’s past. (Global, Fox, 9 ET/PT, 10 MT)

]]>http://o.canada.com/entertainment/television/tv-monday-amber-riley-poised-to-win-dancing-with-the-stars/feed0DEREK HOUGH, AMBER RILEY, TOM BERGERONalxstrachanDancing With the StarsDancing With the StarsDancing With the StarsDancing With the StarsDancing With the StarsDancing With the StarsDancing With the StarsTV Thursday: The forecast calls for Reign (with video)http://o.canada.com/entertainment/television/tv-thursday-the-forecast-calls-for-reign
http://o.canada.com/entertainment/television/tv-thursday-the-forecast-calls-for-reign#commentsThu, 14 Nov 2013 07:59:02 +0000http://o.canada.com/?p=345181]]>If not for The Hunger Games, Reign might never have existed. The youth-oriented costume drama isn’t so much a young, modernized update on Charles Jarrott’s 1971 epic Mary, Queen of Scots as it is an extended music video, with young women in their late teens and early 20s behaving heroically, while all around them their elders behave like scum.

PHOTO: The CWToby Regbo, left, and Adelaide Kane

In its four weeks on the air so far, Reign has defied expectations. It hails from The CW, the same network that gave the TV world such works of art as Hart of Dixie and The Tomorrow People, and airs in Canada on CTV Two. Early reviews were unkind. The Hollywood Reporter dismissed Reign as “a wafer-thin slice of sugary stupidity.” Newsday labelled it “twaddle,” under the heading Sex in the Castle. The New York Post predicted that history buffs would scoff — history buffs scoffed at The Tudors, after all — and suggested that Reign’s target audience of teens and twentysomethings “won’t give a royal tweet about it.”

The truth, as always, has fallen somewhere in the middle.

Reign, filmed in Toronto with rural Ontario filling in for 17th century Scotland — the pilot was filmed in Ireland — has drawn enough curious history buffs to outlast bigger, more expensive, heavily hyped new series like Ironside and We Are Men, which have already fallen by the wayside Reign has drawn enough young women, its target demo, to make it a credible pairing with The Vampire Diaries on parent network The CW. (CTV Two has paired Reign with The X Factor, an equally compatible pick.)

PHOTO: The CWReign

More important, Reign is really good for what it is — idealistic, romantic, sweet-natured in parts and oddly engaging. The pilot episode was directed by City of Angels filmmaker Brad Silberling, and it navigated wild tonal shifts with a refreshing, almost adolescent abandon. Subsequent episodes have been less convincing, but there’s still enough of Reign’s core of romanticism to appeal to a young audience.

Hard Core Logo filmmaker Bruce McDonald directed this week’s episode, A Chill in the Air, in which a former flame of Francis’s (guest star Yael Grobglas) arrives unexpectedly at the castle, bringing “the dangers of the woods” with her, compelling Mary to seek comfort in the arms of her confidante Sebastian, a.k.a. Bash (Torrance Coombs), Francis’s half-brother.

Heart and emotion go a long way when turning a period piece into a teen soap. A young Vanessa Redgrave played Mary in the Jarrott film, and Glenda Jackson played Elizabeth I. Kane is not Redgrave, but she’s convincing here.

Age appropriate, too. In a pop culture where twentysomethings and even thirtysomethings are often cast as high-school students, Regbo is 22 and Kane is 23. They are young actors playing young royals in a costume drama aimed squarely at a young audience.

PHOTO: The CWTorrance Coombs, left, and Adelaide Kane

The songs are catchy, too. Reign’s detractors may have groused about the juxtaposition of Paul Otten’s Girl You’re Alright and 17th century Scotland, but that’s part of Reign’s youthful charm. (CTV Two, CW, 9 ET/PT, 10 MT)

Three to See

• Reign looks as if it will stay for the full season and perhaps beyond, but the same can’t be said of the equally ambitious Once Upon a Time in Wonderland. It’s teetering on the brink of cancellation, so you’d better see it while you can, if you’re curious. In this week’s hour, Will Scarlet (Michael Socha) and Anastasia (Emma Rigby) jump back in time through the looking glass, against her mother’s wishes, only to learn that Wonderland isn’t quite what they expected. (City, ABC, 8 ET/PT, 9 MT)

• It may be a sign of the pop-cultural times that something is no longer cool the moment it appears on Glee. In an outing titled The End of Twerk, the glee club learns and then unlearns the dance fad of the hour. Ioan Gruffudd, of Horatio Hornblower fame, guest stars. (Global, Fox, 9 ET/PT, 10 MT)

• Sheldon (Jim Parsons) demands that Leonard (Johnny Galecki) atone for a past sin by making him walk a mile in his shoes — a fate worse than death — in a Big Bang Theory episode called The Itchy Brain Simulation. (CTV, CBS, 8 ET/PT, 9 MT)

Swallowing his considerable pride, and against his better judgment, he asks Sherlock (Jonny Lee Miller) for help in solving a mystery that, from his point of view, is proving unsolvable. Sherlock is not amused by Mycroft’s relationship with Dr. Joan Watson (Lucy Liu). Whatever game is afoot, he doesn’t much like it — and he’s unafraid to tell his brother so.

PHOTO: CBSJonny Lee Miller

Unswayed, Mycroft presses his case, and in next week’s followup episode, Blood is Thicker, he tries to convince Sherlock to move back to London with him.

That’s unlikely to happen: Elementary is filmed in New York and not about to move any time soon, so London will have to wait for the occasional road-trip episode.

Elementary, now in its second season, has managed a neat trick. It’s one of the most-watched programs on one of the most crowded, competitive nights of the TV week, which means it has tapped into mainstream viewers, many of whom might not know the difference between Sherlock Holmes and Mike Holmes, all the while keeping readers of the original novels in the fold.

Lucy Liu, left, and Rhys Ifans

Little more than a year ago, the idea that an updated-to-present-day adaptation of a literary classic could actually be watchable seemed unthinkable, especially following so soon after Steven Moffat and Benedict Cumberbatch’s fine, ferocious BBC adaptation Sherlock. Watching Miller grow comfortably into the role, without drawing unflattering comparisons to Cumberbatch, has been one of the pleasant surprises of the past TV year.

Liu has had the tougher task in many ways, though, because of the gender flip on Dr. Watson, and the au courant idea that Dr. Watson could be Asian. Thankfully, Liu admitted to reporters earlier this year in Los Angeles, she has received little if any adverse reaction from Sherlock Holmes fans.

PHOTO: CBSLucy Liu, left, Rhys Ifans and Jonny Lee Miller

“Generally people ask me how it is to be a female Watson, but no one has actively criticized me, that I know at least,” Liu said. “The only reference I use is the literature itself. I don’t search the Internet to find out what other people are thinking. It’s better to work in a black hole, because otherwise it can taint what you’re doing.

“You don’t want to disappoint people, because ultimately what we’re trying to do is entertain. If you feel you’re doing something off-colour or wrong, you start to criticize every decision you make. And that can ultimately obscure and paralyze the work itself.

PHOTO: CBSRhys Ifans, left, Jonny Lee Miller and Lucy Liu

“So I stay off the Internet altogether. I don’t read any articles or interviews.”

As Sherlock Holmes himself said, in Arthur Conan Doyle’s original stories, “The world is full of obvious things which nobody by any chance ever observes … You see, but you do not observe. The distinction is clear.”

It’s elementary. (Global, CBS, 10 ET/PT, 8 MT)

Three to See

• Bob Newhart returns as Sheldon’s childhood hero, TV science-host Professor Proton, in this week’s outing of The Big Bang Theory, alongside rival science-host Bill Nye, playing himself. Newhart won an Emmy — the first of his long and storied career, hard as that may be to believe — for playing Proton in an episode earlier this year, so this is a reunion many Big Bang devotees have been waiting for. (CTV, CBS, 8 ET/PT, 9 MT)

• Gaga for Gaga. The mourning period over, Glee returns to its musical roots with New Directions having to choose between Lady Gaga and Katy Perry for their next song assignment. Meanwhile, out in the real world — figuratively speaking — Kurt (Chris Colfer) auditions singers for his new band and must decide whether over-the-top performer Starchild (guest star Adam Lambert) is a good fit. (Global, Fox, 9 ET/PT, 10 MT)

• A long-simmering personality conflict reaches the boil in a Grey’s Anatomy outing called Two Against One, in which Meredith (Ellen Pompeo) and Cristina (Sandra Oh) finally hash it out after one betrays the other at the hospital. Mistresses star Jason George guest stars. (CTV, ABC, 9 ET/PT, 10 MT)

]]>http://o.canada.com/entertainment/television/tv-thursday-sherlocks-brother-returns-to-elementary/feed0ElementaryalxstrachanElementaryElementaryElementaryElementaryTV Monday: Dancing With Stars still has legs, barelyhttp://o.canada.com/entertainment/television/tv-monday-dancing-with-stars-still-has-legs-barely
http://o.canada.com/entertainment/television/tv-monday-dancing-with-stars-still-has-legs-barely#respondMon, 28 Oct 2013 06:43:09 +0000http://o.canada.com/?p=333959]]>Dancing With the Stars still has legs, barely, as the season reaches its midway point. The program’s buzz, what little remained, has dissipated and Dancing is showing its age. Ratings are down, and while they haven’t reached bottom, Dancing’s decline is a reminder that nothing, not even a hit reality TV show, is lasting.

The Amazing Race, Survivor, American Idol, The Bachelor and other reality originals are all down in the U.S., in some cases sharply. And even though Survivor and Amazing Race continue to ride high in the ratings charts here at home, the writing is on the wall. It may be wise to enjoy what remains of Dancing With the Stars while you can. It will return for another season at least, in all likelihood, but the time when viewers could expect both a fall and a spring edition may well be past.

Derek Hough, left, and partner Amber Riley with host Tom Bergeron.

The celebrities willing to submit themselves to the rigours of Dancing’s training regimen — and make no mistake, it’s a demanding, arduous process, especially for those who aren’t naturally fit — are becoming fewer and further between, which is one reason why Dancing’s casting announcements have lost some of their original lustre. Christina Milian is a definite yes for Dancing With the Stars; Christina Aguilera, not so much.

This season has already seen the end of its most heartwarming human interest story, with the elimination of cancer-battling Valerie Harper, as well as arguably its most compelling rooting interest, one-time science guy Bill Nye.

Presumed train wrecks Nicole (Snooki) Polizzi, Elizabeth Berkley and Jack Osbourne are still hanging in there, beneficiaries perhaps of the Bristol Palin sympathy vote, in which viewers vote not for who they think is best but who they want to see come back.

Dancing With the Stars

Berkley, who deserves credit for having survived what ABC’s promotional material delicately refers to as the “cult hit” Showgirls, tied in the lead for the judges’ vote last week, following a Showgirls-inspired cha cha alongside her professional Dancing partner Val Chmerkovskiy. In a confession of the kind that makes Dancing still seem real after 16 seasons, Berkley cried backstage in rehearsal, recalling the hard times she had trying to land a paying job after that famously awful 1995 film.

Elizabeth Berkley, left, with Val Chmerkovskiy.

The other high score, meanwhile, was earned by Glee alum Amber Riley, a mad-talented singer who seems determined to show her dance side alongside pro partner Derek Hough. Riley may yet prove to be a Dancing contestant to watch from here on.

Glee is a physical grind in its own right; Glee’s leading players are given just days to study, learn, rehearse and perform complicated show routines, but that doesn’t mean Dancing is easy. Riley sported a knee brace during her samba performance, and later admitted she “hit a wall” earlier in the week during rehearsal — literally perhaps, and not just figuratively.

Amber Riley, left, and partner Derek Hough.

Dancing With the Stars still has life in it, but its audience is skewing older with each passing week. It’s still worth watching, if that kind of program appeals to you, but it’s clear that The Voice is the white-hot cultural talking point of the moment. (CTV Two, ABC, 8 ET/PT, 9 MT)

Three to See

• Halloween comes early on Murdoch Mysteries. Yannick Bisson pulled double duty as director and star in Monday’s eerie, supernatural-themed outing, in which Det. Murdoch (Bisson) investigates the case of a husband accused of murdering his wife — this after disappearing for a time and then returning as a changed man. Const. Crabtree (Jonny Harris) is convinced the suspect is a ghost of his former self, and not a man at all. If true, this could prove problematic for a man of science like Det. Murdoch. (CBC, 8 ET/PT)

• Movie buffs note: Seduced and Abandoned is a silly, somewhat misleading name for a compelling documentary about Alec Baldwin and cult filmmaker James Toback as they pitch a new project at the Cannes Film Festival. Please don’t let the title dissuade you: This is a must-see for anyone curious about how films get made — or, in this case, not made. Neve Campbell, Jessica Chastain, Ryan Gosling, Diane Kruger and James Caan appear, as themselves. (HBO, 9 ET/MT, 8 PT)

• After a torrid start, The Blacklist has shows signs of an old TV problem in recent weeks: The initial episodes, written by series’ creator Jon Bokenkamp, were terrific, but more recent episodes, written by junior staff writers, have been less so. The Blacklist tries to revert to early form in Monday’s outing, in which Red Reddington (James Spader) and Liz Keen (Megan Boone) go undercover as cryptographers to catch a Chinese spy (guest star Chin Han) in the act, as it were. (Global, NBC, 10 ET/PT, 8 MT)

]]>http://o.canada.com/entertainment/television/tv-monday-dancing-with-stars-still-has-legs-barely/feed0Dancing With the StarsalxstrachanDancing With the StarsDancing With the StarsDancing With the StarsDancing With the StarsLea Michele’s heartbreaking tribute to Cory Monteith on Gleehttp://o.canada.com/entertainment/television/lea-micheles-heartbreaking-tribute-to-cory-monteith-on-glee
http://o.canada.com/entertainment/television/lea-micheles-heartbreaking-tribute-to-cory-monteith-on-glee#respondFri, 11 Oct 2013 15:33:16 +0000http://o.canada.com/?p=327458]]>Last night Glee said goodbye to Finn Hudson, played by late Canadian actor Cory Monteith.

The episode began with the cast singing “Seasons of Love” from the musical Rent. The performers showed an impressive amount of restraint on a song that is easy to blow up into a power ballad. The singers pull back just enough and show the emotion behind the music.

The song is shot simply, the actors dressed in black performing on a bare stage under a heart-shaped spotlight. Grief is visible on each character’s face. Many of the actors show their true age and maturity, like Mark Salling who plays Noah “Puck” Puckerman, looking more like his 31-year old self than his 19-year old character. The song ends by panning up to a full colour photo of Finn Hudson, smiling in his football jersey.

The episode didn’t provide a cause of death for Monteith’s character.

“This episode is about a celebration of that character’s life,” Glee creator Ryan Murphy told Entertainment Weekly in August. “It felt really exploitative to do it any other way.”

The last song of the episode is a tear-jerking solo performance from Rachel, Finn’s on-and-off girlfriend on the show played by Lea Michele, Monteith’s real life girlfriend.

She sings Bob Dylan’s “Make Me Feel Your Love” to a minimal piano accompaniment. She cries as she sings, as do many in the room. It looks like very little of it, if any, is acting. In Monteith, the cast lost a good friend. It feels almost voyeuristic to watch the scene, but it’s impossible to turn away as Michele’s performance hits you right in the feels.

lea-michele: that was one of the hardest things i’ve ever had to watch and i cried harder than i have in a… http://t.co/JItxbzJJMr

The decision to acknowledge the passing of Glee’s lead character Finn Hudson in Thursday’s episode The Quarterback, and more importantly pay homage to actor Cory Monteith, was easy enough.

Glee

Exactly how to pay homage in a way that wouldn’t appear exploitative or sensational or, worse, mawkish and maudlin, was “incredibly difficult,” Murphy admitted to reporters last week. Writing the episode was one thing; filming it, with a heartbroken Lea Michele, Monteith’s mentor Matthew Morrison, and the other cast members who knew him well, was no easier, Murphy said.

Matthew Morrison

In the end, Murphy opted to have Glee’s teenage characters describe what they admired most about Finn, and by extension Monteith, by remembering him at his best and how, in life, he touched them in unexpected ways as they move forward with their own lives. Monteith died of a drug overdose in July.

In having Glee’s characters face the camera and recall what they loved most about their friend and colleague, in words and music, The Quarterback is taking a page from playwright Moises Kaufman’s stage play The Laramie Project, an homage to Matthew Shepard, the gay teenager murdered in Laramie, Wyoming, in 1998. Kaufman’s play, drawn from hundreds of interviews with Laramie residents, focuses on first-person reminiscences, and Glee’s tribute episode takes a similar route.

Kitty (Becca Tobin, left) and Artie (Kevin McHale)

Glee, as the name implies, is intended to be cheerful and upbeat. Murphy understands he needs to strike a delicate balance. The tribute episode, he has said, focuses on young people’s unique spirit and ability to pick themselves up and carry on after tragedy. In that context, it’s only natural to have Glee’s central teen characters — Rachel, Tina, Artie, Kurt and Santana — do the talking.

Tina (Jenna Ushkowitz)

At some point during the hour, Santana, played by Naya Rivera, will perform a cover of the Band Perry’s If I Die Young with its lyric, “Lord make me a rainbow, I’ll shine down on my mother / She’ll know I’m safe with you when she stands under my colours, oh / Life ain’t always what you think it ought to be, no.”

In another scene, Glee’s teens create an impromptu shrine outside Finn’s old locker, and Rachel cries on Will Schuester’s shoulder to the strains of Bob Dylan’s Make You Feel My Love. Glee has always been at its best when it plays fast and loose with TV’s conventional rules. And while there are bound to be those who won’t care for the tribute episode, chances are, it won’t be conventional.

Cory Monteith in Glee

Murphy knew going in that emotions would be running high.

“When you write something like that, there’s no right way to it,” Murphy told reporters last week.

In the end, Murphy chose to appeal to viewers’ hearts, not their heads.

“They loved Cory,” Murphy said of Monteith’s fellow actors and the crew that worked with him. “He was the most kind, the most generous person, with never a bad word for anybody. I think what you will see in the episode is what really happened. Almost everything in the episode is from the first take of every performance. … It was very hard. I struggled working on it, because what you’re seeing is not just what people felt about Finn but Cory.”

Lea Michele, left, and Cory Monteith in Glee

“He was not perfect,” Jane Lynch said of Monteith at last month’s Emmy memorial tribute. In the end, though, those who knew him remember him as the kids in Glee remember Finn: As someone who rooted for the underdog, was able to admit when he was wrong and understood that a little laughter and humility go a long way.

It’s only TV, but as Glee tries to show — if only for this one night — TV matters. Especially if it’s done well and its heart is in the right place. (Global, Fox)

Cory Monteith in Glee

Three to see

— Once Upon a Time in Wonderland shows wonderful promise in its opening hour — provided, that is, you can get past that unnecessarily awkward and somewhat misleading title. Wonderland is not a spinoff from Once Upon a Time, or even a companion series per se, though it hails from the same writer-producers and is also made in Vancouver, on the same studio stage. It’s a revisionist take on Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, and stars an enchanting Sophie Lowe as the young woman who falls down the proverbial rabbit hole and discovers a beguiling — and occasionally dangerous — world on the other side. (City, ABC)

— Score one for Robin Williams. The Crazy Ones, crazily enough, is winning its time period among high-profile, star-driven TV comedies, which means it will last the season at least. In Thursday’s outing, Simon (Williams) realizes he hasn’t been the best parent to Sydney (Sarah Michelle Gellar) and so tries to make up for lost time in his ham-handed way. (City, CBS)

— The Millers held its own against stiff competition in its debut last week in the U.S., though didn’t fare as well here, where it’s pitted against inexplicably popular Two and a Half Men. Even so, its first week is good news for Will Arnett, who’s been looking for a sitcom that doesn’t crash and burn right out of the gate. In this week’s followup episode, family matriarch Carol (Margo Martindale) insists that it’s time to rearrange the family plots in the local cemetery, because of the two divorces. Family feuds die hard. (Global)

]]>http://o.canada.com/entertainment/television/tv-thursday-glee-pays-tribute-to-cory-monteith-in-the-quartback-episode-with-video/feed0alxstrachanGleeGleeGleeGleeGleeGleeGleeTV Weekend: Emmys in good hands with Neil Patrick Harris; Tsunami: Caught on Camera debuts (with video)http://o.canada.com/entertainment/television/tv-weekend-emmys-in-good-hands-with-host-neil-patrick-harris-tsunami-caught-on-camera-debuts
http://o.canada.com/entertainment/television/tv-weekend-emmys-in-good-hands-with-host-neil-patrick-harris-tsunami-caught-on-camera-debuts#respondSat, 21 Sep 2013 06:28:33 +0000http://o.canada.com/?p=314109]]>Neil Patrick Harris has an easygoing vibe and a quick wit, and it’s just as well. As host of Sunday’s 65th Primetime Emmy Awards, he’ll be expected to keep things moving along during a show that has a reputation for being slow, unwieldy and, at times, downright amateurish.

It’s one of TV’s great imponderables: How a medium that relies so much on awards shows for ratings can put on such a lame show when it comes to recognizing their own. It’s partly the dizzying number of categories, partly the three-hour-plus running time, and partly the fact that hardly anyone watching the Emmys has seen any of the nominated films and shows.

Neil Patrick Harris

A good host can make a difference, though — even if diehard TV watchers will have to wait until late into the evening before learning whether Modern Family will continue its Emmy streak, or whether Breaking Bad will finally break into a drama club reserved in recent years for the likes of four-time winner Mad Men and last year’s winner Homeland.

The host has just a few shorts minutes to make an impression between the distribution of awards, but few those short minutes can go a long way.

And while Harris didn’t exactly set the Emmys on fire the last time he hosted TV’s biggest night, four years ago, he proved that one host who knows what he’s doing is better than five hosts who don’t. Harris followed a year in which the Emmys experimented with a quartet of reality TV hosts, who worked without a script on the theory that Jeff Probst, Ryan Seacrest, Heidi Klum, Howie Mandel and Tom Bergeron would be able to make things up as they go along.

As so often happens with live television, it didn’t go exactly as planned.

So Harris is back, a throwback to the old-school style of hosting, with its school rules: Be funny, stay classy and move things along. Emmy producer Ken Ehrlich didn’t reveal any spoilers when he met reporters last month in Los Angeles, but he did say Emmy watchers can expect to see a little song-and-dance from this year’s host.

Ehrlich admitted the traditional In Memoriam segment presents added complications this year, because a number of luminaries who died this year did so before their time. Ehrlich confirmed there would be separate tributes for Cory Monteith, James Gandolfini, Jean Stapleton, Jonathan Winters and writer-producer Gary David Goldberg — a decision which, in Monteith’s case, has flared into controversy. Some have questioned whether Monteith deserves a separate eulogy, over and above the In Memoriam segment. They wonder whether Monteith, who appeared in just three seasons of Glee, warrants more attention than someone like longtime Dallas star Larry Hagman, who died in November and will be mentioned only briefly in the In Memoriam montage.

Cory Monteith, left, in Glee

The question of what’s appropriate and inappropriate, when it comes to memorial tributes, is uncomfortable and a little unseemly. This is where Harris will shine brightest. If his long experience of hosting the Tonys is anything to go by, he will introduce the In Memoriam segment and separate tributes with the class, dignity and sensitivity one has come to expect from a true master of awards ceremonies.

The 65th Primetime Emmy Awards may yet prove to be as unfocused and unwieldy as any other recent Emmy telecast, but at least this time Emmy watchers won’t have to worry about the host. (Sunday, CTV, CBS, 8 ET/5 PT)

•

The 2004 Boxing Day tsunami that tore through wide swaths of Indonesia and washed over low-lying coastlines from Thailand to Somalia has been recounted in innumerable dramatized films and TV programs, most recently in J.A. Bayona’s The Impossible, which featured an Oscar-nominated performance by Naomi Watts.

Fictionalized dramatizations help put a human face on tragedies we otherwise might not know about, or else see in all-too-brief, emotionally detached accounts on the nightly news. As Saturday’s Passionate Eye documentary special Tsunami: Caught on Camera shows, though, the nightly news can only do so much in capturing the scale and disruption to lives caused by natural disasters.

The 2004 undersea earthquake and subsequent tsunami killed more than 200,000 people — the true number may never be known — and coincided with the new digital age of cellphone cameras and portable, hand-held video cams. By the time of the 2007 London terror attacks, consumer technology had advanced to the point where everyday people could record every event they witnessed, live as it happened, in digital-quality video.

.

Tsunami: Caught on Camera

If the September 2001 New York City terror attacks were the most recorded and photographed news event in human history, personal footage of the 2004 tsunami — on a faraway continent, far removed from the world’s media centres — was even more remarkable. Fictional films like The Impossible and the HBO miniseries Tsunami: The Aftermath were based on first-person accounts of the survivors, but Tsunami: Caught on Camera brings those accounts to life as they happened, through the eyes and ears of those who were there.

U.K. company Darlow Smithson Productions, maker of the programs Hawking, How to Build a Bionic Man and Richard III: The King in the Car Park, among others, has combined jittery video, audio recordings and hurried snapshots into a minute-by-minute account of what happened. Tales of survival and the human will to live never seemed more urgent, or real.

Tsunami: Caught on Camera is not disaster porn. There’s no maudlin music, no hectoring voice-over, no preaching from the bully pulpit or talking heads only too happy to share their expert opinion from the hallowed halls of academia. Caught on Camera is a style of documentary filmmaking that has gone out of fashion — simple, bare-bones, by-the-book, first-hand accounts, delivered in halting, shaken voices, with none of the subjective point-of-view so many of today’s documentarians — and critics — confuse with art.

Caught on Camera sticks to English-speaking accounts, for the most part. And while that might not sound particularly inclusive — the hardest hit area, after all, was Banda Aceh in Sumatra; the local language Aceh is spoken by nearly four million people — the result is raw, visceral and real. Well worth watching. (Saturday, CBC News Network, 10 ET/7 PT)

]]>http://o.canada.com/entertainment/television/tv-weekend-emmys-in-good-hands-with-host-neil-patrick-harris-tsunami-caught-on-camera-debuts/feed061ST PRIMETIME EMMY(R) AWARDSalxstrachanNeil Patrick HarrisGleeTsunami: Caught on CameraMonteith used street experience to land last film rolehttp://o.canada.com/news/monteith-used-street-experience-to-land-last-film-role
http://o.canada.com/news/monteith-used-street-experience-to-land-last-film-role#respondTue, 10 Sep 2013 20:50:35 +0000http://o.canada.com/?p=308884]]>Cory Monteith, the Glee star who died July 13 of a drug overdose, used his experience on the streets of Vancouver to play one of his final roles: a drug-addicted male prostitute being pursued by a bad cop.

Monteith co-stars in McCanick, a police drama with a twist. Directed by young filmmaker Josh C. Waller, it stars David Morse as the title character, a homicide detective hunting down a recently released convict (Monteith) who is keeping a secret from their past.

“I saw that original pilot of Glee. I thought it was great. But it was not who we had the image of for this role,” says Morse, who helped develop McCanick over the years.

For one thing, Morse said, Monteith seemed physically wrong for the part. The street hustler, named Simon Weeks, was envisioned as a small man and Monteith was almost as tall as Morse, who stands six-foot-four.

But his size eventually worked to his advantage.

“All of a sudden the idea of having somebody who was physically my equal — not some kid I’m just going to bully, but somebody who could really stand up for himself if he had to — made it much more interesting,” Morse said in an interview at the Toronto International Film Festival, where McCanick had its debut.

Then there was Monteith’s background, which Morse says “would take anybody by surprise, certainly at that time.” As a teenager, Monteith became a petty criminal to fund his drug addiction.

“He had a really tough time growing up, he had an experience of the streets in Vancouver and Victoria and wasn’t shy about talking about it, and actually thought it was important for this role,” Morse said. “That he really had that history. Really knew that world. And it was exciting for him to be able to do something in a creative way that took advantage of that experience.”

Added Waller: “I didn’t quite see it at first, to put it lightly. He won me over with what he wanted to bring to the character, his enthusiasm for the project, his enthusiasm for David. Wanting to work with David was really a big thing for him.”

McCanick is one of two films with Monteith at TIFF. He also stars in All The Wrong Reasons, a Canadian movie about a female store employee who is suffering from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. Monteith plays her husband.

Coincidentally, another recently deceased star, James Gandolfini, also has a film at TIFF: Enough Said, in which he plays the love interest of Julia Louis-Dreyfus.

]]>http://o.canada.com/news/monteith-used-street-experience-to-land-last-film-role/feed0TIFF_-_McCanickjeffreyjaystoneTV Thursday: The Big Bang Theory re-airs Bob Newhart episode (with video)http://o.canada.com/entertainment/television/tv-thursday-big-bang-theory-re-airs-bob-newhart-episode
http://o.canada.com/entertainment/television/tv-thursday-big-bang-theory-re-airs-bob-newhart-episode#commentsThu, 05 Sep 2013 06:15:43 +0000http://o.canada.com/?p=303987]]>The Big Bang Theory’s theory of comedy is disarmingly simple: Take a ridiculous premise, then find some way to make it funny. In a Big Bang repeat from May — new episodes air in three weeks, starting Sept. 26 — comedy legend Bob Newhart appears as Professor Proton, a former popular children’s science host now reduced to doing parties.

The professor was Sheldon’s (Jim Parsons) childhood hero. When Sheldon learns the great man is available on the party circuit, he hires him to do a party for exclusively for himself, Leonard (Johnny Galecki) and Penny (Kaley Cuoco), blissfully oblivious to the idea that things change over time, and it’s never a good idea for a grown man — or woman — to meet their childhood hero, years later.

Bob Newhart, centre, on the set of The Big Bang Theory

One of Big Bang’s long-running jokes is that the more Sheldon knows about a scientific principle, the less Penny knows, or cares. Penny’s ignorance grates on Sheldon; the more ignorant she is, the angrier he gets. The angrier he gets, the more satisfied she is at his obvious discomfort, until it turns into a full-on spat, with Leonard standing in the middle, desperately trying to play the role of peacemaker — just like the Middle East, as Big Bang’s prone-to-exaggeration characters might say.

Good acting is easily overlooked in sitcoms, but one of The Big Bang Theory’s great charms is that the acting is uniformly fine. Cuoco manages to make Penny likable to the point of adorable, despite her barely disguised joy at getting on her friends’ nerves.

So when she feigns ignorance over Professor Proton’s “potato clock” (“How does it work? Is it a trick clock or a trick potato?”) and the poor professor has a near heart attack, spluttering, “I’m having trouble with my pacemaker,” and she replies, deadpan, “Any chance we could plug it into the potato?” it’s hard not to laugh.

The humour has a touch of sadness: Professor Proton was a real scientist in his day, with a credible career in science ahead of him. The TV show got in the way, and in his later years he became a glorified clown act, to his everlasting regret. In an affecting moment, Sheldon tries to buck him up by explaining that it was Professor Proton who interested him in science as a child and inspired him to pursue quantum physics.

When, later, a colleague asks Sheldon how on Earth he convinced Professor Proton to do a show at his apartment, Sheldon shares the professor’s secret to success in life: “As Professor Proton says, ‘There is no problem you can’t solve if you use your noggin.’”

“And,” Leonard adds, without missing a beat, “he wrote him a cheque.”

PHOTO: CBSJim Parsons, left, Bob Newhart and Johnny Galecki

Sheldon is the star at the centre of Big Bang Theory’s universe, and Penny is his comic foil in many episodes — but it’s Galecki’s character, Leonard, who provides the secret comedy ingredient, Theory co-creator Bill Prady told reporters at a meeting of the Television Critics Association in Los Angeles.

“He was always designed to be the centre between two worlds,” Prady said, “between Sheldon, who’s always saying, ‘Retreat, retreat, we’re doing just fine here with Internet, games and science,’ and Penny, who’s always saying, ‘There’s a world out there. Come take a look at it.’ (Leonard) is the character who’s most in motion.”

There you have it then, the secret to Big Bang’s success: There’s a world out there. Come take a look at it. (CTV, CBS, 8 ET/PT, 9 MT)

Three to See

• Patty Duke, Meredith Baxter and American Idol runner-up Jessica Sanchez appear in Glee’s season finale, All or Nothing, which first aired in May. It’s the regionals final — yes, regionals again — and New Directions’ soon-to-graduate seniors have their sights on a slot in the nationals. Glee returns with new episodes on Sept. 26, beginning with the two-part, two-week tribute to The Beatles. (Global, Fox, 8 ET/PT, MT)

• The Vampire Diaries repeats an episode from May, The Walking Dead, in which several dead characters from Diaries’ past are resurrected, complete with tearful reunions and more than a few “aww” moments. It sounds gimmicky, but it’s actually a lot of fun — for Vampire followers, that is. Diaries is one of those few long-running dramas that, because of its supernatural underpinnings, enables fans to reconnect with characters from the past, through flashbacks and other, more unearthly means. (CTV Two, CW, 8 ET/PT, 9 MT)

• Wipeout expands to two hours in a “special” episode — insert your own comment here — in which matchmaker Jill Wagner pairs 24 single men and women into couples and sends them on the ultimate blind date, under challenging circumstances. Said circumstances include a date with the Ant Farm, the fabulous Spinning Sweeper Arms, the Romantic Helicopter Ride (not as romantic as it sounds, happily) and the aptly named Bridge Over Troubled Water. It’s the most entertaining televised blind date ever! At least, that’s what the network promos claim. (City, ABC, 8 ET/PT, 9 MT)

Related articles

]]>http://o.canada.com/entertainment/television/tv-thursday-big-bang-theory-re-airs-bob-newhart-episode/feed1The Big Bang TheoryalxstrachanThe Big Bang TheoryThe Big Bang TheoryThe Big Bang TheoryTV Thursday: Glee re-airs Stevie Wonder episode, without Cory Monteith (with video)http://o.canada.com/entertainment/television/tv-thursday-glee-re-airs-stevie-wonder-episode-without-cory-monteith
http://o.canada.com/entertainment/television/tv-thursday-glee-re-airs-stevie-wonder-episode-without-cory-monteith#respondThu, 29 Aug 2013 06:45:23 +0000http://o.canada.com/?p=300950]]>Glee fans, self-professed Gleeks, were none too kind to the Stevie Wonder-centric episode Wonder-ful when it first aired in May. Judging from the flurry of online recaps at the time — Glee must be one of the most assiduously recapped programs on TV today — fans found fault with everything from a seemingly uninspired song list to inconsistent characterizations to a wafer-thin storyline seemingly calculated to move viewers from one song-and-dance number to another with little regard for continuity, consistency or consequences of characters’ actions.

Reading the recaps today, on sites ranging from TV.com and BlogCritics.org to Television Without Pity, the casual viewer can’t help but be struck by just how obsessively Gleeks follow Glee.

Glee

Hardly any of them could have known it at the time, of course, but one common complaint — the unexplained absence of Finn Hudson, owing to actor Cory Monteith’s being unavailable for filming — provoked some of the most heated reaction, with one fan complaining, “Can’t we get a line of dialogue that establishes why he’s no longer around? It doesn’t make sense for the story that he’s just gone.”

That was then, of course, this is now.

As is widely known, Monteith will not return. The very week Wonder-ful is being repeated, the Glee cast is in production on Monteith’s tribute episode, which is tentatively slated to air Oct. 12.

Monteith’s death will be addressed indirectly, through the sudden and unexplained death of his character.

The episode will not reveal how Hudson died, according to those close to filming. Instead, the tribute episode will open with word of Hudson’s death, followed by soul-searching and remembrances of who he was in life.

The episode is intended to be more a celebration of his life than a wake. The script was penned by Glee creators Ryan Murphy, Brad Falchuk and Ian Brennan, and garnered effusive praise from Glee actress Jane Lynch, among others, who tweeted on Aug. 21, “Just read Cory Monteith memorial episode. Most beautiful thing. Thank you.”

Lea Michele reportedly does not appear in the episode until the very end, and her moment is said to be profound and moving.

Murphy told the Deadline Hollywood website earlier this month that, after careful consideration, Hudson’s death would not be explained by drug overdose, as had been originally suggested.

“How somebody died is interesting and maybe morbid, but we say very early on in the episode that this episode is about a celebration of a character’s life,” Murphy told Deadline. “That may be weird for some people, but it felt really exploitative to do it any other way.”

Murphy said that, in the end, he wanted the memorial episode to be a “lovely tribute” and a heartfelt look at how young people grieve.

“We loved Cory and we loved Finn, and it feels like a huge loss and a huge heartache not to have either of them around,” Murphy told Deadline. “We’re trying to craft an episode that’s not just about us grieving but about a lot of the young fans grieving.”

As chance would have it, Wonder-ful, a less-than-warmly received episode of Glee, has suddenly taken on added meaning, not least because of the cast performances of such Wonder classics as I Wish, Higher Ground, You Are the Sunshine of My Life, For Once in My Life and Uptight (Everything’s Alright).

• The New Green Giants, a Doc Zone repeat from earlier in the year, examines some of the myths and controversies surrounding the organic food industry. You are what you eat, but sometimes you can’t be entirely sure what it is what you’re eating. (CBC, 9 ET/PT)

• A little less action and a little more conversation: Bill Murray joins David Letterman for a late-night chat on The Late Show. The former SNL and Second City player and Caddyshack and Ghosbusters star is Letterman’s only scheduled guest, so this is unlikely to be one of those late night hi-how-are-you/so-long-see-you-later quickies. (Omni, CBS, 11:35 ET/PT)

• It’s hard to find good help these days. That’s one of the conclusions Sherlock Holmes (Jonny Lee Miller) reaches after the general manager of a luxury Manhattan hotel is found dead inside one of his establishment’s industrial laundry machines, in an Elementary repeat from January. (CBS, 10 ET/PT)

]]>http://o.canada.com/entertainment/television/tv-thursday-glee-re-airs-stevie-wonder-episode-without-cory-monteith/feed0GleealxstrachanGleeGleeGleeTV Thursday: Hollywood Game Night’s nears end of summer runhttp://o.canada.com/entertainment/television/tv-thursday-hollywood-game-nights-nears-end-of-summer-run
http://o.canada.com/entertainment/television/tv-thursday-hollywood-game-nights-nears-end-of-summer-run#respondThu, 22 Aug 2013 06:55:33 +0000http://o.canada.com/?p=297544]]>Take the Hint is just one of the Password-inspired games-within-a-game in the prime-time game show Hollywood Game Night. And if you’re one of the game-show fans who have got a kick out of Game Night these past few weeks, you may want to take the hint and watch this week, before it’s too late. The season finale is Aug. 29 and chances are it will be a while before Game Night is back.

Programs in which beloved TV stars exchanged witty retorts while trying to win money for ordinary folks were once as common as TV westerns and tough-on-crime crime dramas masquerading as lighthearted P.I. shows. Password, The $10,000 Pyramid, What’s My Line?, the original The Price is Right, Family Feud, To Tell the Truth and Hollywood Squares were just some of the celebrity-driven game shows that kept daytime viewers glued to their sets between the morning talk shows and the afternoon soaps.

Kenan Thompson

TV habits have changed, though. And Hollywood Game Night, hosted by Glee’s Jane Lynch and featuring two teams of four (three celebs and one regular-folk contestant) playing a series of games while trying to distract the others’ attentions, has felt at times as though it’s trapped in a time warp.

Host Jane Lynch

Each week’s show ends with a bonus round, the Celebrity Name Game, a lightning round in which the winning contestant chooses one of six celebrities to play the game with. The chosen celebrity then describes another celebrity, as best they can, for the contestant to guess. If the contestant can guess 10 celebrities in 90 seconds or less, that contestant pockets $25,000 and their celebrity partner earns $10,000 for the charity of their choice.

Clearly, no one will confuse Hollywood Game Night with Big Brother or The Amazing Race, based on prize money alone, but that’s not the point. The point is to have fun, and trust that you’ll have fun watching at home.

That worked in a more innocent time, when Doonesbury cartoonist Garry Trudeau could appear on To Tell the Truth with two impostors and get away with it, or Anderson Cooper, aged nine at the time, could appear on To Tell the Truth as an impostor for another nine-year-old, and the idea of a 24-hour news channel would have been laughable.

Today, though, Hollywood Game Night plays more like an extended version of the Saturday Night Live skit What’s That Name, with Lynch subbing for Bill Hader’s hilariously smarmy, demented game-show host (“Dylan McDermott or Dermot Mulroney?”).

Thursday’s Game Night features a pair of background players from the now-closed The Office, Ellie Kemper and Angela Kinsey, along with Kenan Thompson — a shout-out to SNL — Max Greenfield, Minnie Driver and Kal Penn.

Angela Kinsey

Yes, at times Hollywood Game Night is easy to ridicule and poke fun at. Jeopardy! was always the show for smarty-pants, though. If you just want to kick back and have a hoot at celebrities, you could do worse than to groove to Game Night’s fun vibe. The more recent shows may not have lived up to the promise of the first episode, but then how could they? That first episode was co-hosted by Martin Short, a multi-talent triple threat who can both play the joke and be the joke, and do it with his eyes closed.

• The prize money is higher, but so is the potential for humiliation — not to mention personal injury — on Wipeout, as contestants face the Space Pod of Doom, the Wipeout Dump, the Sushi Bar and Wipeout’s own patented sea villain Octopushy, all in a bid to win the grand prize of $50,000. Some people will do anything for money; others will do anything to appear on TV. Wipeout evidently appeals to those who will do both. (ABC, 8 ET/PT)

• Dets. Flynn (Kristin Lehman) and Vega (Louis Ferreira) take on a murder case involving fratricide where everyone, and not just the brothers involved, appears to have a motive, in a Motive episode that first aired on CTV in May but is airing on ABC for the first time. (CTV, ABC, 9 ET/PT, 10 MT)

• A seemingly routine raid on a grow-op results in Rookie Blue’s Det. Traci Nash (Enuka Okuma) landing her first murder case. Meanwhile, the boys are away for a weekend of male bonding at Oliver’s (Matt Gordon) summer cabin. Rookie Blue may sound like a rote summer potboiler, but Rookie Blue has performed well in the ratings of late, landing in the No. 8 spot the week of Aug. 5, with 1.2 million viewers in Canada. (Global, ABC, 10 ET/PT, 8 MT)

]]>http://o.canada.com/entertainment/television/tv-thursday-hollywood-game-nights-nears-end-of-summer-run/feed0Hollywood Game Night - Season 1alxstrachanHollywood Game NightHollywood Game NightHollywood Game NightHollywood Game Night Cory Monteith: Art will not imitate life on Gleehttp://o.canada.com/entertainment/cory-monteith-art-will-not-imitate-life-on-glee
http://o.canada.com/entertainment/cory-monteith-art-will-not-imitate-life-on-glee#commentsThu, 15 Aug 2013 19:35:06 +0000http://o.canada.com/?p=296067]]>It looks like life is not going to imitate art when it comes to Glee and Cory Monteith.

According to Entertainment Weekly, Finn Hudson won’t be going out the same way Monteith did. Glee creator Ryan Murphy spoke to the outlet and said, “There were a lot of things that we had to decide — how are we going to deal with his death?”

He added, “At one point, we were going to have his character die after an accidental drug overdose — that was something we had considered. But we have decided that we’re not going to have him pass from that. Basically, what we’re doing in the episode is we are not telling you yet, or maybe not at all, how that character died. The idea being, how somebody died is interesting and maybe morbid, but we say very early on in the episode, ‘This episode is about a celebration of that character’s life.’ That might be weird for some people, but it felt really exploitative to do it any other way.”

Either way, Murphy told EW that the cast has been having dealing with the pain of losing their co-work/friend and have been relying on each other for support. He told the outlet, “… There’s been tears on set. It’s been hard for a lot of people. But the really difficult thing is coming…. I think it turned out to be a lovely tribute, and it’s a very heartfelt look at how young people grieve.”

]]>http://o.canada.com/entertainment/cory-monteith-art-will-not-imitate-life-on-glee/feed1Cory MonteithmirandafurtadoCory Monteith: Friends talk about his last nighthttp://o.canada.com/entertainment/cory-monteith-friends-talk-about-his-last-night
http://o.canada.com/entertainment/cory-monteith-friends-talk-about-his-last-night#commentsThu, 08 Aug 2013 15:21:40 +0000http://o.canada.com/?p=292885]]>Cory Monteith’s continuous recovery from addiction has been at the forefront of every story covering the star’s death, so it only makes sense that fans have wondered what exactly happened with his friends on the evening of his tragic death.

Monteith’s close friend and acting coach, Andrew McIlroy, talked to People Magazine and insisted that the friends accompanying the star earlier that evening were nothing but positive influences on his tumultuous life.

“They weren’t strangers, they weren’t bad guys. They were longtime sober friends. Cory knew them maybe 10 years. Essentially, he had spent time with [them] as sober people,” McIlroy told People. “They were not using with him [that night]. There was no double life up here.”

McIlroy, who was supposed to meet the star for breakfast on the morning of his passing, told the mag that he last saw Finn — err, Monteith — a few weeks prior and that he was doing great. “He was just recently out of rehab and he was good.”

He added, “He was happy to be breathing fresh air and putting in full days and being active.”

“He was fine, that’s what’s so awful,” he told the mag.

McIlroy also spoke of the company that Monteith was keeping that night and explained how they described how the night went down. He said, “The vigilance against using is nuts. If I or anyone understood the mindset nobody would ever slip.”

It isn’t just Monteith’s friends dealing with his death, the star’s on-and-off set girlfriend, Lea Michele, has reportedly been dealing with the death by helping others on the Glee set cope. According to Us Weekly, Michele has offered her input on how to address the tragic event on the hit series. A source told the magazine, “Lea wants it to reflect the truth, to warn people what can happen.”

]]>http://o.canada.com/entertainment/cory-monteith-friends-talk-about-his-last-night/feed1Cory MonteithmirandafurtadoWatch: Lea Michele’s heartwarming dedication to Cory Monteith at Teen Choice Awardshttp://o.canada.com/entertainment/watch-lea-micheles-heartwarming-dedication-to-cory-monteith-at-teen-choice-awards
http://o.canada.com/entertainment/watch-lea-micheles-heartwarming-dedication-to-cory-monteith-at-teen-choice-awards#respondMon, 12 Aug 2013 14:47:14 +0000http://o.canada.com/?p=294330]]>Break out the Kleenex! Lea Michele took home the Teen Choice Award for Choice TV Actress, where she took the opportunity to make a heart-wrenching dedication to her late on-and-off set boyfriend, Cory Monteith.

The Glee actress told the crowd, “I just wanted to be here today to personally thank all of you and tell everyone out there how much your love and support has meant to me over these very past few difficult weeks,” she told the crowd.

“Not that I had any doubt before, but you guys are most certainly the greatest fans in the world and I wanted to dedicate this award to Cory,” she added.

(Seriously, break out the tissues!)

“For all of you out there who loved and admired Cory as much as I did, I promise that with your love we’re going to get through this together. He was very special to me and also to the world,” Lea continued. “We were very lucky to witness his incredible talent, his handsome smile, and his beautiful beautiful heart. So whether you knew him personally or just as Finn Hudson, Cory reached out and he became a part of all of our hearts and that’s where he will stay forever. So thank you guys so much. Thank you.”

]]>http://o.canada.com/entertainment/watch-lea-micheles-heartwarming-dedication-to-cory-monteith-at-teen-choice-awards/feed0130812_LeaMichelemirandafurtadoFox boss Kevin Reilly recalls Cory Monteith (WITH VIDEO)http://o.canada.com/entertainment/television/fox-boss-kevin-reilly-recalls-cory-monteith
http://o.canada.com/entertainment/television/fox-boss-kevin-reilly-recalls-cory-monteith#respondThu, 08 Aug 2013 15:14:18 +0000http://o.canada.com/?p=290281]]>BEVERLY HILLS, Calif. — Cory Monteith will be remembered as a warm, humane human being, and those who knew him best miss him terribly, Kevin Reilly, chairman of entertainment for the Fox Broadcasting Co. told reporters Thursday at the summer gathering of the Television Critics Association.

Reilly confirmed that Glee will return Sept. 26 with a pair of Beatles-themed episodes that have been in the works for several months. The third episode of the season will be a special tribute episode to Monteith’s character, Finn Hudson.

Monteith died from complications from an overdose of drugs and alcohol on July 13 at a Vancouver hotel.

Glee will take a hiatus after the tribute episode for “at least three weeks,” Reilly said, for the World Series and so that the cast and producers can decide where the series will go from there.

Glee debuted on Sept. 9, 2009 and went on to become a pop-cultural sensation. It’s now entering its fifth season. Calgary-born Monteith was a shy, retiring young actor who grew up in Victoria, B.C., and was working odd jobs in Vancouver and taking acting classes with Vancouver-based acting coach Andrew McIlroy when he was picked for the key role of a high-school football quarterback who drops athletics to pursue a calling in musical theatre, song and dance. Lea Michele, who played Monteith’s on-screen romantic interest, Rachel Berry, was close to Monteith in real life. The two became a couple shortly before Monteith’s death at age 31.

In a hushed ballroom of more than 200 reporters from across the U.S. and Canada, Reilly described how he felt humbled by Glee’s young cast members and their wise-beyond-their-years reaction to the sudden loss of a colleague and close friend.

“Lea has been an extraordinary human being and a pillar of strength for everyone through all this,” Reilly said. “She was the one who said, “I want to get back to work.’”

Cory Monteith, left, with Lea Michele on Glee

Glee’s tribute episode will tackle Monteith’s passing head-on, Reilly said. This is not the time to try and gloss over the surface.

“I can’t speak to the details directly because (show creator) Ryan (Murphy) and the guys are still breaking it. What I will tell you is that episode will deal directly with the incidents involved in Cory’s passing, and the drug use in particular. Ryan himself will shoot some PSAs with the cast, past and present, as friends of his. They will speak directly to the audience. I think it will be very, very impactful.

Lea Michele, left, with Cory Monteith in Glee

“My hope is that the good that we talked about at Cory’s service last week will somehow get out there, where it matters. The celebration (of his life) was incredibly sad but he was an incredibly vibrant and young kid. What we all said, and what everybody knows, is that when we see some people struggling with addiction it’s so easy to fit them into a category. ‘Oh, he was dark.’ ‘Oh, she was always a partier.’

Cory Monteith in Glee

“Cory was a big, open, wonderful life force. He was not a problem. Everybody loved him. He didn’t look like that. He looked straight, straight as an arrow. He was very open about his past, not as open about the present.

“We were shocked,”Reilly said. “Everybody was ultimately shocked, because it was an accident. I can’t stress that enough. It was not intentional. It was an accident. It happened to somebody struggling with an addiction. That’s hopefully what can come from this, illuminating that particular kind of addiction.

“That’s what (Murphy) will be doing with the show. Right now, I want to give them a few weeks to really get their hands around it about how to deal with it and create an episode that will do him justice.”

]]>http://o.canada.com/entertainment/television/fox-boss-kevin-reilly-recalls-cory-monteith/feed0Fox President Kevin Reilly addresses reporters at the Television Critics Association press tour in CaliforniaalxstrachanGleeGleeGleeLea Michele makes us cry in new Glee photohttp://o.canada.com/entertainment/lea-michele-makes-us-cry-in-new-glee-photo
http://o.canada.com/entertainment/lea-michele-makes-us-cry-in-new-glee-photo#respondWed, 07 Aug 2013 15:33:51 +0000http://o.canada.com/?p=292329]]>Lea Michele is back home … on set, that is. The Glee actress posted a very somber photo of her on set yesterday captioned, “Feels so good to be home.”

Just the day before Michele was spotted at a recording studio for the show, where she reportedly laid down some tracks for a song dedicated to her late boyfriend, Cory Monteith. “Thank you Alex Anders and Adam Anders for a great recording session today. You guys are the best,” she tweeted. “Couldn’t have picked a more beautiful and perfect song to start the year with.”

It looks like the folks over at FOX are ramping up the Monteith tributes, too. The studio has released a set of clips of beloved Finn. Watch it below:

]]>http://o.canada.com/entertainment/lea-michele-makes-us-cry-in-new-glee-photo/feed0130807_LeaMichelemirandafurtadoGlee TV stepdad Mike O’Malley recalls Cory Monteith with fondnesshttp://o.canada.com/entertainment/glee-tv-stepdad-mike-omalley-recalls-cory-monteith-with-fondness
http://o.canada.com/entertainment/glee-tv-stepdad-mike-omalley-recalls-cory-monteith-with-fondness#respondSun, 28 Jul 2013 16:52:42 +0000http://o.canada.com/?p=287957]]>BEVERLY HILLS, Calif. — The spirit of Cory Monteith continues to weigh over the summer meeting of the TV Critics Association as, one by one, actors, writers and producers who worked with the late Glee actor recall their moments together before Monteith passed away unexpectedly on July 13.

This past weekend, it was Mike O’Malley’s turn. O’Malley, star of the new NBC/Global TV fall comedy Welcome to the Family, plays Burt Hummel, protective father to Chris Colfer’s gay teen Kurt Hummel on Glee.

Glee will return for a fifth season a week later than originally scheduled, on Sept. 26. A tribute to Monteith, the third episode of the new season, is tentatively slated to air Oct. 10.

O’Malley, asked to share his memories of Monteith, recalled a scene, “probably the toughest scene I’ve ever acted in my career,” in which his character throws Monteith’s character out of his house after he uses a gay slur to describe his screen son.

PHOTO: Adam Rose/FoxRachel (Lea Michele) and Finn (Cory Monteith) announce their engagement to the class in an episode of Glee.

“It was remarkable to me, when we were shooting that scene over and over again, the depth of emotion he was able to portray — the sorrow, the shame,” O’Malley recalled. “He was the fictional quarterback on that show, and ever since I met him he was the very real quarterback on that set. He was an incredibly warm guy, a guy who was welcoming to everyone who came onto the show this past year. He was a very, very hardworking actor, and I just loved working with him. He was a great guy, and I miss him very much.”

PHOTO: David Giebricht/FoxFinn (Cory Monteith) and Rachel (Lea Michele) in an episode of Glee.

“I hope to,” he said. “I’m doing Welcome to the Family. We shoot one episode five days a week. But Burt Hummel is a very important role to me. It’s been a great, great part. I’ve told all those guys at Glee that I will work early in the morning, late at night, Saturdays, Sundays, whatever I need to do to participate in, not only continuing on the show but honouring Cory and his passing, and that character. He is, on the show, my stepson. So I certainly plan on being there. I actually think they’re going to be shooting that episode possibly during a time when we’re on hiatus, so it’s entirely possible.”

]]>http://o.canada.com/entertainment/glee-tv-stepdad-mike-omalley-recalls-cory-monteith-with-fondness/feed0Fox's 'Glee' Sing-A-LongalxstrachanLea Michele:Cory Monteith 313Selects_002Lea Michele:Cory Monteith 404Ep404Sc24-4040MMA Crossfire Exclusive UPDATED – Erica Gimpel performs Sunday July 28th in Pasadenahttp://o.canada.com/entertainment/music/mma-crossfire-exclusive-erica-gimpel-performs-saturday-july-28th-in-pasedena
http://o.canada.com/entertainment/music/mma-crossfire-exclusive-erica-gimpel-performs-saturday-july-28th-in-pasedena#commentsWed, 24 Jul 2013 03:06:29 +0000http://o.canada.com/?p=285848]]>Actress and singer-songwriter Erica Gimpel, known for her iconic role as Cocoa Hernandez on the show FAME, and appearances on shows such as True Blood, Nikita, and Criminal Minds will be performing in concert Sunday July 28th in Pasadena, California.

She will perform her signature anthem to women song, Spread Your Wings. The tune is also featured in the movie Hill and Gully.

The current Power of Youth issue of Variety, an entertainment trade magazine founded in 1905, features a number of Canadian names and faces. The expanded issue is dedicated to the impact some of Hollywood’s young people are having on the real world, outside the day-to-day routine of studio filming, photo ops and red-carpet walks.

Among the Canadians to warrant a mention, perhaps no one is more prominent than Nina Dobrev, the Bulgaria-born, Toronto-raised actor who started her career as teenage single mother Mia Jones in Degrassi: The Next Generation and came to fame as Elena Gilbert in the long-running teen drama The Vampire Diaries.

The youth advocacy charity Free the Children placed a full-page ad congratulating Dobrev, 24, for a Power of Youth Award, bestowed in part for her efforts on behalf of Free the Children and for hosting We Day, Free the Children’s youth empowerment event.

In a separate, full-page profile, Dobrev was cited for engaging First World youth to be ambassadors for change on behalf of less fortunate children abroad, in emerging nations in Africa, Asia and Latin America.

Dobrev noted the charity has built more than 600 schools and classrooms in countries around the world, but added, “There’s still so much to do. We’re … so lucky in America and often don’t even realize it.”

Dobrev has been working with the Canadian-based agency since 2007, when she was still in her teens. For her first mission, she helped build a school and install a freshwater drinking well in a village in Kenya, and helped teach in the local school — a trip, she said later, “that forever changed me, affected my life.”

Dobrev found that when she talked to friends about it, it created a domino effect which inspired other people to act.

“I love their whole concept of kids helping kids,” Dobrev told Variety. “The program really encourages young people to travel to different countries and actually physically do something and meet the kids, as opposed to just donating money and hoping it gets to the source. That’s what I found so appealing.”

The same issue also lauds child actors Maisy and Lennon Stella, progeny of the Whitby, Ont. country group The Stellas. Robin, 13, and Stella, nine, play Connie Britton’s children on the Emmy-nominated drama Nashville.

Veteran Vancouver cameraman Rob McLachlan is cited in a two-page ad placed by HBO in recognition of HBO’s 110 Emmy nominations. McLachlan, 56, has been nominated for outstanding cinematography, for Game of Thrones’ season finale, Mhysa. McLachlan’s nomination is one of 17 for Game of Thrones.

Of the full-page ads in the commemorative Power of Youth issue, none is more poignant and sobering perhaps than the simple, stark full-page testimonial to Cory Monteith.

Monteith, who died in Vancouver July 13 of what the coroner’s report described as “a mixed drug toxicity,” is shown in black-and-white, leaning against leather scaffolding, hands in pockets and smiling shyly, with the simple caption, “Cory Monteith … In our hearts forever.”

The testimonial ad was commissioned by the Fox Broadcasting Company, which produces the TV show Glee, in which Monteith came to fame as Finn Hudson, a star high-school athlete with a growing talent for song and dance.

Glee will return Sept. 26, a week later than originally announced, with a long-planned two-part Beatles tribute. Co-creator and executive producer Ryan Murphy is wrestling with how to incorporate Monteith’s passing into the show. He has since confirmed to E! and The Hollywood Reporter that Glee will pay tribute to Monteith in the show’s third episode, to air Oct. 10.

The show will then take an extended break, “go off the air for a while,” and return at a later, yet-to-be determined date.

Murphy ruled out recasting Monteith’s role with another actor.

“The right thing to do for the show, at least at this point, is to have that character pass,” Murphy told The Hollywood Reporter. “When we do the tribute episode . . . we’ll have to do it in a way where the cast members will not have to recreate feelings of grief that they’ve had this week, but do it in an upbeat way.”

“[She] felt the best thing for the cast and crew was to be together and get back to work and get back to work and be together every day and talk about our memories of him,” he told E!

Murphy added that grief counselors will be on set for the first two weeks of filming, “because people are really hurting.”

]]>http://o.canada.com/entertainment/great-white-norths-fame-and-misfortune-makes-mark-in-hollywood/feed0Disturbing BehavioralxstrachanBad Moon RisingFOX Presents An Evening With "Glee" - ArrivalsGlee_Scene11-13ChoirRoom_0296300_MG_2815Cory Monteith to be cremated and spread across three of his favourite citieshttp://o.canada.com/entertainment/cory-monteith-to-be-cremated-and-spread-across-three-of-his-favourite-cities
http://o.canada.com/entertainment/cory-monteith-to-be-cremated-and-spread-across-three-of-his-favourite-cities#respondMon, 22 Jul 2013 15:32:33 +0000http://o.canada.com/?p=284633]]>Cory Monteith touched many hearts as the lovable Finn Hudson on Glee, so it only seems fitting that his ashes be scattered across the three places that he loved the most: Victoria and Vancouver, B.C., and Los Angeles.

According to Monteith’s cousin, Richard Monteith, the actor spent a lot of time in each of these places, so it’s only fitting that he be laid to rest in each of them. Richard told In Touch Weekly, “I think Cory’s mom wants to spread some of the ashes in the different places he loved.

“I think she wanted to cremate him so they could spread his ashes in LA, Vancouver, and Victoria and keep a little bit for the family.”

According to new reports, the Glee premiere will be postponed by one week and the decision was reportedly made by Monteith’s on and off-screen girlfriend Lea Michele and show creator Ryan Murphy. The creator told TVLine.com, “She was very adamant that she thought it was best for the cast and crew to get back to together sooner [rather] than later so that mortgages could be paid and people could take care of their families,” he said.

During the interview, Murphy opened up about how they would pay tribute to the fallen star and that the third episode of the season would explain the character’s death (episode one and two are already written.)

He told the site that the episode “is a very difficult episode to write.”

“[It] has to be done very carefully and with a lot of taste and really make sure that it’s a tribute to Cory,” he told TVLine.com.

According to reports, the show will take a hiatus after the third episode. Glee co-star Chord Overstreet recently sat down with E! News where he explained, “You either deal with it head-on or you just disappear until January or February, and I think that’s not what people need right now from a position of leadership,” he said.

“We decided that, but to reiterate it, I don’t want anything to feel rushed and I feel like that’s why the third episode we’re going to take a long hiatus so that people can continue to feel taken care of and just pause and get the help that they need and not feel like we have to be rushing back.”

During Overstreet’s performance at The Roxy in LA, the singer/actor dedicated Travis McCoy and Bruno Mars’ hit “Billionaire” to his late co-star. He told the crowd, “I sang this with Kevin McHale and Cory Monteith. I love you buddy.”

Cory was found dead in a Vancouver hotel on July 13. The coroner confirmed that the actor passed away from a fatal combination of alcohol and heroin.

The answer lies in a patchwork of residential drug-rehabilitation centres and non-residential self-help programs, counselling, and treatment services.

Some programs are strictly psychological interventions, while others involve the use of medication. Programs can be motivational or confrontational, one-on-one or as part of a group.

What works?

“There is no agreement. You’ll get a variety of dogmatic opinions. But basically you’re condemned to have a variety of opinions as to what’s best,” said Bruce Alexander, a professor emeritus of psychology at Simon Fraser University.

Drug-treatment strategies have come under scrutiny in the wake of the death of 31-year-old Canadian actor Cory Monteith, star of the hit TV series Glee, from a heroin and alcohol overdose.

Monteith had reportedly checked himself into a drug-rehab facility — it is not known where — in April. His death in a Vancouver hotel last weekend prompted headlines like “When Rehab Doesn’t Work” and “How the Drug Treatment System Failed Cory Monteith.”

Similar questions followed the alcohol-related death two years ago of singer/song writer Amy Winehouse, whose single “Rehab” included the lyric, “They tried to make me go to rehab, but I said, ‘no, no, no.’”

Figuring out the best course of treatment depends on your profile, experts say. Are you an occasional user or an everyday user? For two years or two decades?

Those who are more severely addicted, for instance, might be better suited going to an in-patient treatment facility.

One approach, called motivational enhancement therapy, gets the client to reflect on the consequences of their drug use on their health, their relationships, and priorities in life, said Julian Somers, a clinical psychologist and professor at SFU.

Sometimes, delivering the hard facts can be quite impactful, such as telling a client that consuming a certain amount of a drug, at their weight, could be lethal, he said.

Other strategies might focus on addressing the possible roots of someone’s drug use, such as a childhood trauma, and helping them develop other coping skills. (Monteith’s troubles reportedly began following his parents’ divorce when he was young).

Another approach might be to get the client to focus on scenarios that lead to drug use, and finding ways to avoid those scenarios. If drugs were used in the past as a way to unwind or to celebrate an occasion, for instance, are there alternative activities?

Some programs require complete abstinence from day one of treatment, while others identify ways of reducing harm without necessarily requiring abstinence. This latter approach recognizes that some people are unprepared to stop their drug use and puts more emphasis on minimizing the risks of death, disease or injury.

Tim Stockwell, a professor of psychology at the University of Victoria, said one of the pitfalls of abstinence-centred programs is after a period of abstinence, tolerance levels drop, so if a client relapses and uses the same dosage they had used before treatment, they could overdose.

Drug-based therapies are not fully developed but some have shown promise. Methadone, for instance, has been used to treat heroin addicts. Because it is an opiate substitute, it helps to prevent the onset of withdrawal symptoms, while also blocking the euphoric effects of heroin, according to a Health Canada study examining substance abuse treatment.

In an article in Scientific American following Amy Winehouse’s death, Bankhole Johnson, a professor of neuroscience at the University of Virginia School of Medicine, said while there wasn’t a good drug yet for cocaine addiction, there were drugs to help treat alcohol and opiate addictions.

“I don’t believe that traditional rehab using self-help methods is effective. In fact, the data suggest that they’re not much better than spontaneous rates of recovery,” he was quoted as saying.

“The medicines that work are better than the psychological treatment alone.”

One growing area is pet or animal-assisted therapy, pairing drug-addicted individuals with dogs, cats, even horses, as a way to help them relieve stress and anger and feel compassion.

A high-tech experimental treatment developed out of Duke University uses video software to expose drug-addicted individuals to a virtual world that might simulate a crack den, for example, and then aims to help them control their cravings.

Following an intensive phase of treatment, experts agree follow-up care is critical to success. That means ensuring that individuals have support from professionals, family and friends who can help them stay on track.

“It’s not a one-quick fix,” said Colleen Dell, professor of sociology and public health, and research chair in substance abuse at the University of Saskatchewan.

Somers said while a lot of treatment programs have been set up to help drug-addicted individuals with severe or complex needs, such as those with mental disorders, who are pregnant or who have HIV/AIDS, there still remains a lack of programs for the majority of people with addictions.

That said, he acknowledged that Canada has been a “pioneer” in certain areas, including providing services to homeless people with addictions and in its treatment of criminal offenders who are drug-dependent.

A report a few years ago by the National Treatment Strategy Working Group in Ottawa identified the harmful use of alcohol and drugs as a $40-billion-a-year problem in Canada and called for greater integration between health and social service providers to help those with substance abuse problems.

“The vast majority of Canadians affected by substance abuse problems do not use specialized addiction services. However, they do access other sectors of the health-care system — as well as other systems such as social services, housing and education,” the report said.

“Research findings suggest that providing appropriate services and supports across a range of systems not only reduces substance use problems but also improves a wide range of outcomes related to health, social functioning and criminal justice.”

***

Questions to ask when considering substance-abuse treatment:

*Does the provider conduct an assessment to develop an individualized treatment plan?

*Does the provider vary the treatment plan according to the severity of the client’s problem?

*Does the provider insist on abstinence or will they accept clients who wish to reduce their use?

*Does the provider offer a range of services to address all relevant needs?

*Does the treatment plan change according to the client’s changing needs?

]]>http://o.canada.com/news/where-do-you-turn-when-youve-hit-rock-bottom/feed020091116bg_01.JPGdougpostmediaGlee castmates knew of Monteith heroin addictionhttp://o.canada.com/entertainment/celebrity/glee-castmates-knew-of-monteith-heroin-addiction
http://o.canada.com/entertainment/celebrity/glee-castmates-knew-of-monteith-heroin-addiction#commentsWed, 17 Jul 2013 16:18:10 +0000http://o.canada.com/?p=282534]]>When the British Columbia corner’s office cited a mixed-drug toxicity involving heroin and alcohol as the cause of death for Glee actor Cory Monteith, it was not a shocking revelation for the Calgary-native’s castmates.

According to TMZ, the cast and producers of the Fox show were aware of the star’s issues with the banned substance and were instrumental in persuading him return to rehab last March.

A source claims a group of Glee representatives staged an intervention (or “open conversation”) for the troubled actor.

“It wasn’t met with resistance … He was always so grateful and aware of how fortunate he was,” the source recalled. “The decision was to best help our friend. The needs of the show fell second to his well-being.”

According to reports, Monteith, who was raised in nearby Victoria, B.C., grew distant when his family tried to come to his aid but attended Alcoholics Anonymous meetings while in the west coast city.

“Cory went to AA meetings when he got to Vancouver with some friends of his and mine,” a source told RadarOnline . “Vancouver is a great place to keep grounded when you are in the spotlight and trying to be sober.

“Being grounded is the key to sobriety and that’s what Vancouver can offer Cory. It is casual and he calls it home and he has friends here who have known him for a long time.”

Police Constable Brian Montague told reporters that, “there was evidence in the room that was consistent of a drug overdose,” adding that he wouldn’t “go into specifics.”

]]>http://o.canada.com/entertainment/celebrity/glee-castmates-knew-of-monteith-heroin-addiction/feed1The Cast Of "Glee" Signs Copies Of "Glee: The Music Vol. 1" In Los AngelesjonathandekelActors Lea Michele (L) and Cory Monteith attend the cast of "Glee" Signing copies of "Glee: The Music Vol. 1" at Borders Books & Music, Columbus Circle on November 3, 2009 in New York City.Cory Monteith – a shy, self-effacing actorhttp://o.canada.com/entertainment/cory-monteith-a-shy-self-effacing-actor
http://o.canada.com/entertainment/cory-monteith-a-shy-self-effacing-actor#commentsMon, 15 Jul 2013 02:21:06 +0000http://o.canada.com/?p=281019]]>Cory Monteith will leave behind a void. That will be as certain to anyone who knew him personally as anyone who came to know him casually, in TV-character terms, as studious, hard-working high-school grad and theatre devotee Finn Hudson on the fifth-year musical drama Glee.

Monteith did not hail from a conventional background, and so when he was found dead at age 31 in a Vancouver hotel room Saturday, news reports were quick to note he had struggled with serious drug addiction since he was a teenager, and voluntarily entered rehab in April this past year.

That’s not who he was, though. Monteith started acting in his late teens, having left school at 16, and that perhaps says more about the person he was and what drove him to succeed, deep down. It was that unusual combination of raw, untapped talent and a quiet, self-effacing, almost shy demeanour that first drew him to respected Vancouver acting coach Andrew McIlroy.

It was never about him. It was always about those who helped him along the way.

McIlroy was Monteith’s muse, mentor and advisor in life, as well as acting. McIlroy, a veteran character actor in his own right who’s not so much an acting teacher as a life coach, was there from the beginning, and stayed with Monteith through those early, heady days when Glee became an overnight pop-cultural sensation in a way few primetime network dramas have, then or since.

Monteith’s innate humility and embarrassment at being the centre of attention was on ready display at the 2010 Television Critics Association Awards, when Glee won a pair of awards, including Program of the Year, over a field that included Breaking Bad, Lost, Modern Family and Friday Night Lights. After the ceremony, as he filed out of the hall, he spotted a fellow visitor from Canada, a reporter for Postmedia News, and broke into a wide smile. “This is nuts,” he said, and that summed up his even-tempered approach to Hollywood fame and glitter as much as anything he could have said in a pre-prepared speech.

McIlroy was there in the audience earlier this year when Monteith appeared, alongside his Glee castmates and Glee co-creator and executive producer Ryan Murphy, on the James Lipton interview program Inside the Actors Studio.

Cory Monteith. Photo: Gail Oskin/FOX

When Lipton asked Monteith about his creative inspirations, Monteith surprised everyone in the room by pointing out McIlroy in the audience. McIlroy seemed embarrassed by the sudden camera attention, but that was Monteith in a nutshell.

It was never about him. It was always about those who helped him along the way.

When, later in the program, Lipton asked Monteith on what he would like to hear God say at the Pearly Gates — a standard Inside the Actors Studio question Lipton asks nearly all his interview guests — a quiet and reflective Monteith replied, without missing a beat: “‘Sorry I haven’t been around — there’s a good explanation.'”

Too many good artists, singers, actors and actresses die before their time.

Actors Lea Michele and Cory Monteith take a break between scenes while shooting the television show Glee in Central Park in New York, Tuesday, April 26, 2011. Charles Sykes/AP

Monteith will be remembered, not as a James Dean-style rebel or rabble-rousing carouser and late-night party animal, nor will he be remembered as an unrepentant adolescent who refused to grow up. He will be remembered, both by those who knew him and by those who caught him fleetingly in Glee, as a genuinely warm, soft-spoken old soul who was always quick to ask about others before worrying about himself.

Related articles

]]>http://o.canada.com/entertainment/cory-monteith-a-shy-self-effacing-actor/feed1071413MONTEITH7alxstrachanCory Montheith of GLEE takes pictures at the Hot Topic store in the Natick Mall, Natick, MA.Actors Lea Michele and Cory Monteith take a break between scenes while shooting the television show Glee in Central Park in New York, Tuesday, April 26, 2011.Glee star Cory Monteith, 31, found dead in Vancouverhttp://o.canada.com/entertainment/corey-monteith-dead
http://o.canada.com/entertainment/corey-monteith-dead#commentsSun, 14 Jul 2013 05:08:24 +0000http://o.canada.com/?p=280721]]>(For the Vancouver police and coroner update from Monday, July 15 click here.)

Vancouver police confirmed Saturday night that Glee star Cory Monteith, a longtime resident of the city, was found dead shortly after noon at the Fairmont Pacific Rim Hotel.

Autopsy results are being fast-tracked “due to the intense public interest” and are expected “in two or three days” a police source told E! Online.

The actor checked in on July 6 and was slated to check out on Saturday. Police learned that others were in the room with Monteith on Friday night. But he was alone in the room later into the evening.

Hotel staff went to his 21st floor room after the check-out time was missed. He had been dead for several hours.

“We are in shock and mourning this tragic loss”

– Cory Monteith’s family

While the cause of death wasn’t immediately apparent, explained Acting Police Chief Doug LePard and Coroner Lisa Lapointe, there was no sign of foul play.

“We have interviewed everyone he was with the night before. For the most part, it has been turned to the Coroner’s Office who will be determining the next steps with respect to establishing cause of death,” said Const. Brian Montague.

The star, who rose to stardom playing the reluctant quarterback-turned-singer Finn Hudson in the hit television series Glee, was found dead Saturday in a Vancouver hotel room. He was 31.

Surveillance footage showed he had been with friends Friday night but returned to his room alone.

Monteith’s family issued only a brief statement to The Hollywood Reporter following news of his death. “We are in shock and mourning this tragic loss,” it read.

His death comes several months after he told People magazine that he had admitted himself into rehab for substance abuse, but police declined to speculate whether there was any connection.

Monteith’s publicist Melissa Kates said she is saddened by the news, while the executive producers of “Glee” and Fox said that Monteith was an exceptional talent and a joy to work with, and he will be missed.

Vancouver police held a 10:30 p.m. PT Saturday news conference in the effort to accommodate the level of media interest in the story.

But police also explained some details weren’t being disclosed because the family had just been informed of the death about an hour earlier.

Further details will be released pending an investigation.

A video of the nine-minute Vancouver Police Department news conference can be viewed below with the official statement that preceded reporter questions found later in this post:

“I have no words! My heart is broken,” Dot-Marie Jones, who plays football coach Shannon Beiste on Glee, said in a post on her Twitter account Saturday night. She called Monteith a “hell of a friend” and an “amazing” man.

Other cast members also posted their immediate reactions on Twitter.

Oh my God. Cory. Man. I can't. Praying for you man. You were a good soul.

Monteith voluntarily admitted himself to a treatment facility for substance addiction earlier this year but that program reportedly concluded on April 26.

The 31-year-old actor was born in Calgary, raised in Victoria, and started a TV and movie career in Vancouver before being cast as Finn Hudson on the U.S. musical series Glee in 2009.

This is the statement from the Vancouver Police Department news conference:

Shortly after noon today, the Vancouver Police received a call from the BC Ambulance Service regarding a sudden death in a room on the 21st floor of the Fairmont Pacific Rim Hotel at 1038 Canada Place in downtown Vancouver.

Police attended within minutes of the call and paramedics advised the man in the room was clearly deceased. Coroner’s staff did attend the scene.

The deceased has been identified as 31-year-old actor Cory Monteith, who achieved great fame on the popular TV series Glee.

Before I give further information, on behalf of the Vancouver Police, I want to pass on our condolences to the family, friends, castmates and millions of fans of Mr. Monteith. As was the case in countless homes, I watched Glee regularly with my daughters, and I know there will be shock and sadness in many households with the news of his tragic death.

Mr. Monteith checked into the hotel in July 6th and was due to check out of the room today. There were others with Mr. Monteith in his room earlier last night, but video and fob key entries show him returning to his room by himself in the early morning hours and we believe he was alone when he died.

When he missed his check-out time, staff went to the room at noon and found his body.

We know there will be considerable interest in this case, and we have detectives assigned to the case who attended with our Forensic Identification Unit to examine the scene, to ensure to the extent possible that there are no unanswered questions.

Hotel video has been secured as well as room access records. Our investigators have spoken with hotel staff, who are providing the utmost in cooperation.

An autopsy is schduled for Monday. The Coroner will be determining the next steps with respect to establishing cause of death, but all indications are that there was no foul play.

Monteith tweeted to over 1.5 million followers during his hotel stay that he was repeatedly listening to the song “Paris” by the British band Friendly Fires.

]]>http://o.canada.com/entertainment/corey-monteith-dead/feed14Cory Monteithmarc weisblottTV Wednesday: Happily Divorced imitates Fran Drescher’s lifehttp://o.canada.com/entertainment/television/tv-wednesday-happily-divorced-imitates-fran-dreschers-life
http://o.canada.com/entertainment/television/tv-wednesday-happily-divorced-imitates-fran-dreschers-life#respondWed, 19 Jun 2013 06:39:45 +0000http://o.canada.com/?p=266164]]>Happily Divorced has a few years to go before it matches the longevity of Fran Drescher’s other sitcom, The Nanny, which aired for half a dozen seasons between 1993 and 1999.

Happily Divorced has already lasted longer than many believed it would, though, when the sitcom about a woman who discovers her husband of 18 years is gay debuted in June 2011.

Drescher and her former real-life husband, TV writer-producer Peter Marc Jacobson, based Divorced on their own lives and a marriage that lasted nearly 20 years before Jacobson realized one day that not everything was quite right.

The twist in the fictionalized TV version is that the couple can’t afford to live apart in a down economy, so they live together, legally divorced but happy to be able to pursue separate romantic interests. Drescher plays a heightened version of herself in the sitcom; Jacobson’s fictionalized character, Peter Lovett, is played by John Michael Higgins, a regular in Christopher Guest’s travelling company of mockumentary actors.

TV Land, Happily Divorced’s parent network, is a throwback to TV’s so-called golden age, with reruns of old classics filling much of its daily schedule. Happily Divorced joins a growing roster of set-in-present-day, in-house TV Land comedies, featuring TV sitcom stars of the past, such as Hot in Cleveland with Betty White, Valerie Bertinelli and Jane Leeves.

As with Hot in Cleveland, Happily Divorced has tapped into an audience of aging baby boomers with fond memories of The Nanny and who like their TV comedy broad and bawdy. Happily Divorced won’t make anyone forget The Golden Girls or Designing Women, let alone Murphy Brown, but it will appeal to anyone who wants to be reminded of TV’s past, but in a modern-day setting.

Happily Divorced is early in its second season on Global TV, where it’s being burned off during the summer on Wednesdays, wedged between reruns of The Office, now closed for good, and the soon-to-return Chicago Fire.

In this week’s episode, Newman vs. Newman, Drescher’s character, Fran Lovett, plays peacemaker when her parents, played by longtime TV veterans Rita Moreno (as Lovett’s mother Dori Newman) and Robert Walden (as her father Glen), have a fight and Dori, fed up with her husband, moves in with her daughter. True to sitcom convention, it isn’t long before mother and daughter are at each other’s throats and a coerced reconciliation seems the only solution.

Divorced’s second season, expanded to 24 episodes after initial ratings outperformed expectations, aired in its entirety earlier this year on TV Land, and is only airing now in Canada. Divorced’s makers announced on the show’s Facebook page in April that a third season has been approved, which means a sitcom few viewers here have heard of is nearly halfway to the mark established by The Nanny.

This is the face of TV in the age of the multiple choices, where there’s no such thing as a small audience anymore — on the specialty channels, anyway — and even an intermittently funny, modestly successful sitcom on an obscure, out-of-the-way cable channel can win enough of an audience to warrant a third season. Happily Divorced won’t win too many hearts, but it’s a reasonably entertaining diversion on an otherwise hot, midsummer’s night. (Global, 9:30 ET/PT, 10:30 MT)

Three to See

• Numbers lie. How to Live With Your Parents (for the Rest of Your Life) deserved a better fate than early cancellation, as Wednesday’s episode — funnier-by-half than anything in Happily Divorced — proves. That’s the difference, though, between a modestly intended sitcom made for a specialty channel and one, like Parents, made for a major broadcast network, with greater ambitions and a much higher bar for ratings success. In this week’s episode, Polly (Sarah Chalke) inadvertently steals the limelight from her mother Elaine (Elizabeth Perkins) at Elaine’s birthday party, thanks to her outsized personality, triggering years of long-ago buried family resentments. It’s another mother-daughter story but told a different way, and with funnier one-liners. (City, ABC, 9:30 ET/PT, 10:30 MT))

• Jeff Daniels is not a TV newsman. He just plays a newsman on TV, in Aaron Sorkin’s HBO drama The Newsroom, which returns for a second season in July. Daniels talks about what makes The Newsroom, and his character Will McAvoy, tick on The Late Show With David Letterman. (Omni, local stations, CBS, 11:35 ET/PT)

]]>http://o.canada.com/entertainment/television/tv-wednesday-happily-divorced-imitates-fran-dreschers-life/feed0Happily DivorcedalxstrachanTV Thursday: Glee’s curtain call packed with guest starshttp://o.canada.com/entertainment/television/tv-thursday-glees-curtain-call-packed-with-guest-stars
http://o.canada.com/entertainment/television/tv-thursday-glees-curtain-call-packed-with-guest-stars#respondThu, 09 May 2013 06:34:37 +0000http://o.canada.com/?p=243344]]>Glee calls it a season with a tuneful, celebratory hour that features a number of guest appearances you’re unlikely to see on any other prime-time series, and the sense that this wildly uneven, toe-tapping musical drama has finally found its footing. Thursday’s season finale, All or Nothing, represents as well as any episode this season the show Glee will be from now on.

Glee

The roster of guest stars includes luminaries from TV’s golden age of comedy, including Patty Duke and Meredith Baxter, but with a modern twist.

American Idol 2012 runner-up Jessica Sanchez makes a head-turning appearance as up-and-coming Latin diva Frida Romero, and that in itself is notable. Sanchez is just 17, high-school age, and not the typical twentysomething usually tapped to play a high-schooler in prime-time TV’s most maddening yet addictive high-school drama.

Sanchez made her name with Idol, and her appearance in Glee sets a precedent of sorts.

When Glee burst onto the scene with the 2009 debut Showmance, executive producers Ryan Murphy, Brad Falchuk and Dante Di Loreto swore Glee would never feature a crossover episode with American Idol. In a way, it still hasn’t. Sanchez is playing a fictional character, not herself, and her career-making turn in a reality-TV singing competition could just as easily have been on The Glee Project as “that other show,” as Glee insiders sometimes refer to Idol.

Patty Duke, left, and Meredith Baxter

Something remarkable has happened in the four years and 88 episodes Glee has been on the air, though. It has touched the culture in an indelible way, and has encouraged dozens if not hundreds of high-school musical theatre programs across not just the U.S. and Canada but in the U.K., where the reality-TV spinoff The Glee Project has become a sizable hit in its own right.

The finale’s story is simple enough by Glee standards and in tune with past Glee finales. It’s regionals again, and William McKinley High School’s glee club is newly determined to make it to the national finals. Brittany (Heather Morris) returns from a college scouting trip with a new attitude, and Ryder (Blake Jenner) finally has a line on who’s been “catfishing” him these past few months.

Lea Michele in Glee

NeNe Leakes returns as “Work with me, people!” vocal coach Roz Washington, along with a number of Glee Project alumni. Montreal’s Vanessa Lengies returns in her recurring role as Sugar Motta, marking a kind of full circle. Lengies made her TV bones in Dick Clark’s American Bandstand-flavoured drama American Dreams in 2002, opposite a young Brittany Snow.

Lengies has come a long way from her girlhood in the small town of Hudson, Que., and her first TV appearances in the Canadian kids’ shows Sponk!, Are You Afraid of the Dark? and Popular Mechanics for Kids.

Glee is the major leagues. And despite the haters, it’s managed to not just survive but thrive in a TV landscape that otherwise is full of cop shows, crime dramas and sitcoms.

Di Loreto, for his part, can’t say enough about the fans who followed Glee from the beginning, as he told a group of visiting reporters earlier this year during a visit to Glee’s main sound stage at the 20th Century Fox film studio in Los Angeles.

Vanessa Lengies

“I want to extend a thank you,” Di Loreto said, hoping his message would get out to Glee’s fans. “Because this is a show that could have disappeared into obscurity, had it not been for a beautiful, brave few people who it, and really owe a debt of gratitude to those of you who saw the show early, loved it, shared the word and helped us build an audience.

“Because whatever the long-term success of the show, it really required bravery at the beginning to say, ‘Hey, there’s something unusual, there’s something different about the show. And you are the ones who made that happen, and we’re incredibly grateful to you for that.”

So there.

And you thought watching TV was something you did in the dark, in isolation, and the people who make the shows really don’t care about you. Well, in Glee’s case, they do, and they’ll be the first to tell you. Enjoy the show. (Global, Fox, 9 ET/PT, 10 MT)

Three to See

• Community calls it a year, and possibly a wrap for good, with a finale that finds Jeff Winger (Joel McHale) with enough credits to graduate and thinking about his future. If Community does return — parent network NBC makes it official one way or the other May 13 — it will be without Pierce Hawthorne. Chevy Chase quit, don’t you know? (City, NBC, 8 ET/PT, 9 MT)

• First the power went out in the entire state of New York last weekend on Revenge. Now the Machine is on the blink in the season finale of Person of Interest. It’s TV’s latest trend, during this time of season-enders. On Person of Interest, Finch (Michael Emerson) and Reese (Jim Caviezel) ask some unlikely allies to help them get the Machine up and running again. Once again, there’s never a good electrician — or a geek — around when you really, really need one. (City, CBS, 9 ET/PT, 10 MT)

]]>http://o.canada.com/entertainment/television/tv-thursday-glees-curtain-call-packed-with-guest-stars/feed0GleealxstrachanGleeGleeGleeGleeTV Thursday: Person of Interest finds a ghost in the Machinehttp://o.canada.com/entertainment/television/tv-thursday-person-of-interest-finds-a-ghost-in-the-machine
http://o.canada.com/entertainment/television/tv-thursday-person-of-interest-finds-a-ghost-in-the-machine#respondThu, 02 May 2013 06:08:28 +0000http://o.canada.com/?p=239458]]>Person of Interest is nearing the end of its second season with no signs of a sophomore slump, and Thursday’s hour — the setup for the season finale on May 9 — couldn’t be more aptly timed.

The tech-savvy drama about a shy technology expert (played by Michael Emerson) and a reclusive, retired covert operative (played by Jim Caviezel) who help people in trouble by using trippy modern-day surveillance equipment was always going to be an easy sell with a public used to the idea that every move we make — in the big city, anyway — is monitored on CCTV cameras.

That premise — reassuring to some, worrying for others — has been thrust into the spotlight in the real world in recent weeks, in the wake of the Boston Marathon bombings and subsequent manhunt. Person of Interest is that rare kind of TV thriller that is both entertaining and thought provoking. Caviezel and Emerson’s characters are altruists, idealists even, who use technology to right a wrong, correct an injustice or simply help an innocent person out of a jam.

Jim Caviezel, left, and Michael Emerson

As political commentary, Person of Interest comes squarely down on the side of law and order. It’s not just conservative in its thinking: It might be the most conservative crime drama on television. If bad people do bad things, it’s saying, they shouldn’t be surprised if they’re caught on camera. Similarly, people who are doing nothing wrong have nothing to worry about, so why should they care if they’re caught on camera? Every breath you take, every move you make, Big Brother is watching.

Thursday’s episode raises a tantalizing question, though. What happens if those who monitor the camera footage can no longer trust what they’re seeing? What happens if a ghost gets in the machine?

The episode, Zero Day, follows Reese (Caviezel) and Finch (Emerson) as they realize a virus has somehow got into the Machine, the supercomputer Finch created to keep track of crime statistics and predict what’s going to happen next, and where. The virus is malevolent and dangerous, and they find themselves in a race against time to find a tech billionaire so elusive no one has ever seen him, let alone managed to catch him on camera — that they know.

Michael Emerson

The May 9 finale, God Mode, finds Finch looking into his past and his former partner in computer engineering. Sarah Shahi, Brett Cullen, Carrie Preston and Amy Acker reappear in their recurring roles, but the emphasis, as befitting a two-part season finale, is squarely on the principles.

Michael Emerson

Emerson, an Emmy Award winner for Lost, has an uncanny ability to portray a nervous intelligence coupled with social awkwardness: It’s hard to imagine any other actor in the role. And Caviezel, a proven big-screen actor from his performances in Terrence Malick’s The Thin Red Line and The Passion of the Christ, has both a strong physical presence and deep reserves of thoughtfulness: He’s the thinking woman’s action hero.

Person of Interest, like any TV crime drama, runs hot and cold from week to week. Some episodes snap with energy; others just lie flat, weighed down by their own inertia. So many conventional crime dramas go by the playbook, from one episode to the next. What saves Person in the end, though, is that wonderful pairing of actors. And that trippy premise. As recent events have shown, the prevalence of hidden TV cameras on the street is something we’re all going to have to get used to, as urban society moves toward a seemingly inevitable Aldous Huxley-esque future. (City, CBS, 9 ET/PT, 10 MT)

Three to See

• Parks and Recreation’s season finale finds Leslie Knope (Amy Poehler) celebrating her first year as a city councillor, while some of her colleagues weigh new directions in their lives. April (Aubrey Plaza) deals with some potentially life-changing news, while Tom (Aziz Ansari) weighs a new business opportunity. Parks will likely be back for a sixth year. Though parent network NBC has yet to make it official — NBC unveils its fall schedule on May 13 in New York — Parks’ return seems assured. (City, NBC, 8:30 ET/PT, 9:30 MT)

• Community, on other hand, is not so safe, despite the fervour of its frantic, almost cultlike fans. If that includes you, you may want to enjoy these remaining episodes while you can. Thursday’s outing, Heroic Origins, focuses on Abed’s (Danny Pudi) efforts to prove that the study group members crossed paths in a past life and were destined to get together again at Greendale. Déjà vu all over again, in other words. (City, NBC, 8 ET/PT, 9 MT)

• If you’ve watched Glee for any length of time, you may have suspected that wheelchair-bound Artie (Kevin McHale) has a tough-as-nails mom. Well, it’s true! Katey Sagal, biker matriarch Gemma Teller Morrow in Sons of Anarchy, appears as Artie’s mother, in Glee’s second-to-last episode of the season. Meanwhile, Directions salutes the music of Stevie Wonder, in an episode dubbed Wonder-ful. (Global, Fox, 9 ET/PT, 10 MT)

Erica Gimpel: Yes, I have. I went on kind of a spiritual training course. I’ve been a practicing Buddhist for 26 years so I went there as sort of a deepening of an understanding of my practice.

MMA Crossfire: Fascinating. Let’s recap your last album.

Erica Gimpel: The album is called Spread Your Wings and Fly and that title song is my anthem for women. The inspiration for it was an organization here in Los Angeles called The Downtown Women’s Centreand it’s helped for the last 30 years women who have been homeless on the streets get permanent housing and kind of get them back on their feet. What I had conceptualized was a benefit concert honouring and really supporting the end of homelessness. And honouring the organization too for all the great work they’ve been doing.

And for me personally, the record, the journey is a lot of things. It’s an appreciation I have for my parents; love; having love in life; being loved; romantic love. It’s a very personal journey and something that I wanted to do for a long time.

MMA Crossfire: It comes across as elegant and classy. I like the track Rising.

Erica Gimpel: Thanks. That came from a friend of mine who is a wonderful musician and had a jam session in her house. Some of the greatest musicians in L.A. would show up there and jam in her house for hours. I started that as a jam at her house and then just evolved it to the tune you heard.

MMA Crossfire: I see. And obviously you were involved in all aspects of the record. Is that side just as enjoyable as the creative side?

Erica Gimpel: Yeah, I mean the producing of the record took it to a whole other level of listening. The playing of it, shaping it so that it shines in the best light. So there’s different aspects of the songs. How can we bring it out the various qualities of the song.

MMA Crossfire: Right. And then after that album, you were still doing your thing in the other avenues.

Erica Gimpel: I just did three episodes of Nikita. I’m not sure you knew that…

Erica Gimpel and Maggie Q in a scene on the TV show Nikita. Image courtesy Erica Gimpel.

Erica Gimpel: Yeah. That’s how I thought you contacted me. Yeah, I was in Canada for some months, in Toronto and that was a really great experience, a great character. And I also am working on the show Criminal Mindshere in the United States…

MMA Crossfire: Yes, I’ve heard of Criminal Minds.

Erica Gimpel: Yes, that show.

MMA Crossfire: So when you did Nikita, was that your first time in Toronto?

Erica Gimpel: Yes it was my first time.

MMA Crossfire: Did you get a chance to visit anything?

Erica Gimpel: It was really difficult honestly, because of the hours of the show. I really wanted to go to the galleries. I mean I would go out to different restaurants and stuff, but I didn’t get to see as much as I wanted.

MMA Crossfire: Well maybe next time, because I think would be a great choice for one of your concerts…

Erica Gimpel: Yes, absolutely. Absolutely.

MMA Crossfire:Peter Ustinov once said Toronto is New York City run by the Swiss.

Erica Gimpel: (Laughs).

MMA Crossfire: It’s one big melting pot and it seems to share a lot of attributes with your hometown there.

Erica Gimpel: The jazz bassist? She’s insanely amazing. I don’t know if you saw the Oscars this year, she sang What a Wonderful World at the Oscars this year. She’s one of the leading jazz bassists of our time she’s 23-years-old. She’s incredible.

Musician Esperanza Spalding.

MMA Crossfire: I’ll have to check her out. Anyone else that strikes you?

Erica Gimpel: An artist that inspires me right now… Actually it was a dialogue that really inspired me. Do you know who Tavis Smiley is? He has his own show here in the United States.

MMA Crossfire: Yes, of course.

Erica Gimpel: Tavis Smiley had a really amazing conversation with Viola Davis and Octavia Spencer when they were nominated for the Oscar for the film The Help. It was an incredible dialogue and it really inspired me as an artist. Viola Davis was saying how especially as a woman of color, especially in America – and I don’t know if it’s the same for Canada – sometimes there’s this really big pressure to play someone who’s upstanding, who has nobility, who’s respectful, who is a wonderful thing. Because a lot of time characters are not written in that way or you feel a sense you want to have that kind of strength and respect. But she said human beings are messy. We have dark moments, we have light moments, and we have all sorts of things. And she was saying as an actor, she’s like, ‘I want to play all of that. I want to play all the palette of humanity. I don’t want to have to be limited to just this kind of way.’ And I think for me what that really inspired me, because as an actress and also as a musician myself, I definitely want to inspire people. And FAME caused so much inspiration for people to follow their dreams artistically. But it’s that fine line of saying, “I really want to inspire you but I can’t be afraid to go into the darkness of aspects of humanity either, because that shines a light on what people struggle with. Know what I’m saying?

MMA Crossfire: That’s pretty deep.

Erica Gimpel: Yeah. So that really inspired me. And I really love what’s she up to in terms of the different kinds of roles she likes to play in terms of being able to go into darkness and yet also going into light. Just being free to paint fully the palette. I have a song, which will be on the record called Soldier Boys, which is about an actual event that happened in Iraq that happens to do with American soldiers. And it’s looking at just what our men and women go through when they go over to war and some of the atrocities they’re asked to perform and yet come back and fit back into society like everything’s cool. But that’s not true. My point is that I feel it’s freeing to have the self-permission to go into what’s not pretty and bring life to it. Because that’s I think how life illuminates and really teaches, inspires and awakens people. And that’s the kind of art I like to be apart of.

MMA Crossfire: And now you’ll need to give me a couple of minutes to digest that.

Erica Gimpel: (Laughs) OK.

MMA Crossfire: That brings me into another question. Three fundamental truths of being in show business.

Erica Gimpel: Three fundamental truths. Hard to say, that’s a great question.

It ebbs and flows, meaning that you can be in a flow of work, and then you can have moments where you feel it’s drying up. You need persistence to be apart of this work. Such rock-solid persistence. And I think the third for me is, you have to love it in order to stay in it, or the battle scars they will fling upon you… (Laughs).

Erica Gimpel, a star from the original FAME series.Picture By David Conachy

And I also think it’s really important that you keep growing, challenging yourself to go further because you can get stuck in one way of being, which can become very limiting.

MMA Crossfire: I see. So then what did you do to challenge yourself to come up with this new album? Because you did Spread Your Wings and Fly. What process did you undertake? Was it organic or did you craft something to come up with this album?

Erica Gimpel: I think I took risks in terms of life experiences. Went places that I was hesitant to go which then spurred new music like the instrumental piece Freedom. So by leaping more into my life, it brought out new music in me. I pushed the envelope in choosing to take on more experiences that I might not have in the past.

MMA Crossfire: Can you give me an example?

Erica Gimpel: I mean like traveling, like going and working in another country for example, that at first I was really hesitant to do. But by taking that leap into the unknown – because I didn’t know what I was going to step into going there – it opened up something in me that would not have opened up had I not stepped into that experience. So that’s what I mean by expanding and saying Yes to things that maybe in the past I might have been afraid to say yes to.

MMA Crossfire: I’m guessing that country wasn’t Canada.

Erica Gimpel: No, that country was Ireland.

MMA Crossfire: That certainly expanded your horizons.

Erica Gimpel: That brought some really cool music out and exposed me to cool musicians that really helped me grow as an artist.

Erica Gimpel in Malibu, California. Image courtesy Erica Gimpel.

MMA Crossfire: You obviously have a loyal fan base. Do you find that the people that buy your music tend to be either FAME fans or fans of your previous work?

Erica Gimpel: Yes. And sometimes what’s been cool about playing out here in the States is that people who really knew I was an actor didn’t know I played and composed so that’s been kind of cool too, meeting new people who didn’t know me until seeing me play somewhere. So that’s been kind of cool too, but definitely it’s come from some of my older work that people find.

MMA Crossfire: So you can have generations of fans discovering different sections of your work. That’s pretty cool.

Erica Gimpel: Yeah, that is really cool.

MMA Crossfire: Do you think shows like American Idol and Dancing with the Stars help or hinder the perception of the business or getting into it?

Erica Gimpel: You know, it’s so funny; I was watching The Voicelast night. It’s really cool. The premise I really like, because everyone’s who’s a judge is also a coach and is also performing. So it’s not like they’re just sitting there watching idly and giving their critique. They’re actually getting up there and performing with their team. It’s a really interesting concept. I think what’s cool about it is you have a person who’s well-established taking a new person under their wing, coaching them, and then singing side-by-side with them at the same time. It’s a different premise.

Erica Gimpel in concert. Image courtesy Stephen Doyle.

I think the dance of our society – and I don’t know you feel about this so I’d be interested in your take – I think this whole overnight success fantasy that for whatever reason America, the world creates. A lot of these young artists have either been singing prior to coming to the show or have the good fortune to connect with this opportunity, which is going to help launch them. But it’s also like you don’t get to see what somebody is made of until after they’ve left the show, what happens to them afterward if they don’t win. Or the people who come to the show prior, they’re in their 30s and have being singing for years and years in the club. Like one guy on the show was singing background for Alicia Keys for years. Great singer. So he’s getting the opportunity to shine as a solo artist now. But everybody comes from somewhere and they come with training and a past. So there’s a part of me that says, ‘Wow! Look at how amazing they are!’ You kind of want to know about their past.

I don’t know if I’m making sense. My point is that a lot of times it’s not an overnight success thing. People have come with some training and really are busting their ass to do something, challenge themselves.

That to me is more inspiring than the overnight success story.

MMA Crossfire: Interesting. We have Canadian Idolhere, which is similar to American Idol and a few other similar shows. I thought they weren’t supportive enough of the contestants. Once the winner was crowned, it was up to them and only them to make a success of themselves. I don’t watch these shows a lot but maybe they’re starting to realize the contestants need support in all phases of the show including afterwards.

Erica Gimpel: That’s an interesting perspective. I don’t really know what they do on The Voice…

MMA Crossfire: My point is for all the winners of American and Canadian Idol, how many do you know right now?

Erica Gimpel: What’s interesting too is some of the people that don’t win. There’s certain people who did not win or got kicked off and then blew up. So the winning is not going to guarantee anything and being let go is not going to guarantee anything. It’s really the individual and what they’re going to do as they move forward. Know what I’m saying?

MMA Crossfire: I think it goes back to what you said. You have to know who you are and realize that just getting on the show is an opportunity.

Erica Gimpel: Exactly.

MMA Crossfire: And once you’re on the show, it’s up to you to figure out how to use it. Once you figure that out, your chances of breaking in are increased.

Erica Gimpel: Exactly. Yup.

MMA Crossfire: And I believe on The Voice they don’t see the participants, they listen only to their voice.

Erica Gimpel: Exactly. That’s what attracted me to it because they’re actually sitting there with their backs to the person and whoever inspires them to turn around -because of their voice only – do they turn around. That’s really cool because it has nothing to with how that person looks.

MMA Crossfire: You recently went to Italy. Talk about that experience.

Erica Gimpel: In November 2011 I was asked to go to Parma, Italy to perform in a benefit concert that would be raising money for families in Italy who were having a hard time affording groceries and also for an orphanage in India. The benefit concert grew into a show that was called the ‘Box of Dreams’. I was flown to Italy where I met up with Nia Peeples,Jesse Borrego and Cynthia Gibb and we had an incredible time!

We sang some of the old fame songs like Starmaker and of course FAME and I also sang two songs from my CD, Love will Come Back to Me and Spread Your Wings. What was so surprising to me was how much the FAME songs were still loved and what warm reception we were met with. I sang one of the songs from FAME that happened to be my favorite I Still Believe in Me and was so surprised to look out into the audience during the night of the concert to see women singing along with me with tears in their eyes as if the song has become their own personal anthem. Also the band that was backing us up,Disco Inferno, had studied the songs from my CD so by the time we got to rehearsal they had all the harmonies worked out. It was wonderful collaborating with them.

The narration of the show was in Italian so I couldn’t understand a lot of it but at one point during the show an actor read a Pablo Neruda poem. Now during a rehearsal, this actor overheard me playing one of my instrumentals on the piano entitled Joyce’s Serenade, and he asked me if I would accompany his reading with my song, and we were communicating in broken English and the few words I knew in Italian but somehow we got to understand each other and of course I said Yes! And then all at once it dawned on me I was collaborating beyond languages, through music and poetry we came together. That was a special moment for me.

I think what summed up the experience was when the producer of the whole event Stefano said in his Italian/English the reason he likes to create projects like this is because he likes to share love with people. That’s what the Parma experience was, an experience from the heart. I am filled with gratitude when I can fill my life with moments like that!

MMA Crossfire: Fascinating. 2012 marks the 30th anniversary of the TV show FAMEand the 25th anniversary of the last episode. Talk about FAME’s significance.

Erica Gimpel: What really floors me, and this is what I’ve gotten and it indicates how far-reaching the show really became over time. And what I mean by that specifically is how many people it inspired to follow their dreams. Especially people of color who have contacted me and sent letters or through Facebook. for example a fan from Sweden who was actually Peruvian, who hadn’t seen anybody who looked like her on a TV show. It really gave a confirmation to some people from Holland, who hadn’t seen anybody who looked like them.

Erica Gimpel in Fame. Image courtesy Erica Gimpel.

It gave people a confirmation that yes, you can go for what it is you truly desire. And I think it ignited an inspirational flame in a lot of people that continued to resonate and has spun off… I don’t know a lot of Canadian shows, but in terms of America, the TV show Glee, and now this new TV show called Smash, which is a behind the scenes look at a musical bound for Broadway, so it’s a musical theatre show that’s doing very well. And Glee’s success in terms of the high school Glee Club and all the musical numbers they perform. But FAME was very groundbreaking during it’s time. And what I think is unique about it is being able to harness youthful energy, that volatile, passionate, alive energy and be able to focus it in a direction, is so imperative. I feel that’s what we need in our world right now, so that our youth can really focus their energy to create something that’s really meaningful so they’re alive. That’s what it’s meant to me over the years.

MMA Crossfire: Has anyone contacted you about doing something for the anniversary?

Erica Gimpel: No, I haven’t heard anything.

MMA Crossfire: When was the last time you spoke with one of the gang?

Erica Gimpel: Well as I said, I was in Italy with some people. Probably been a year with some of them. I sometimes will see Lee (Curreri), he’s come out to some of my gigs in L.A., I saw Valerie (Landsberg) at the premiere of the new FAME movie in LA, and recently shared one of my favorite tracks from my CD entitled Love will Come Back to Mewith Lori Singer, because of her playing and love of the cello, and my song has a beautiful cello line that I wanted her to hear. Then Debbie (Allen), invited me to the opening of her dance studio in Los Angeles which was wonderful to see what she had created and the incredible talent coming out of her school.

Erica Gimpel as Coco Hernandez in Fame. Image courtesy Erica Gimpel.

MMA Crossfire: I can’t see the 30th anniversary going by without somebody doing something.

Erica Gimpel: Yes. We’re not halfway through the year yet, so we’ll see.

MMA Crossfire: Was it around the end of FAME, that you started dabbling with the piano?

Erica Gimpel: Yeah, well I actually started playing the piano when I was five. But I didn’t continue, like I played maybe from five to eight or nine, like really studying intensely, then I stopped and started doing other things and then came back to it around high school sort of dabbled, and then really started studying songwriting when I came back to New York.

MMA Crossfire: Compare back then and now the transition from TV to theatre.

Erica Gimpel: Well, I had really wanted to do theatre in New York, so for me it was something I was really looking forward to doing. But back then was very different than now. Now, a lot of people who have done TV draw people to the theatre, but back then it was very separate. If you had done television and were successful, it was like, ‘Well, you gotta prove to us you can do theatre,’ you know? It was a different time. So I had to pay my dues as it were (Laughs). But it was good and very different. It wasn’t the kind of Hollywood life; it was about what are you made of? When you’re on stage, there’s nowhere to hide. You’re up there. And I had some really great experiences in New York. I did a play off-Broadway called Each Day Dies with Sleepby a wonderful playwright Jose Rivera .

Erica Gimpel (L) in the Jose Rivera written play Each Day Dies with Sleep. Image courtesy Erica Gimpel.

Did you ever hear about the film The Motorcycle Diaries? He wrote that and was nominated for the Oscar for it. He’s a very prolific playwright and screenwriter. So I was a lead there which was very transformative for my life. I continued to go back to the theatre and I ended up doing a Sam Shepard play, (State of Shock) which was a dream come true for me, working with John Malcovich. Then my favorite play, Intimate Apparel, which was written by the wonderful playwright Lynn Nottage. She’s an African-American woman and a wonderful Pulitzer prize winning writer.

My point is that the transition was challenging because it was so different and I was always learning new ropes and new ways of doing things.

Erica Gimpel: What I really learned over many years – 30 years – is what sustains you is the love of the craft itself. The love of working on a role that I’m so excited about. The love of writing songs that I get so inspired by. The love of the play that I just say, ‘Oh my gosh, that’s such an exciting play.’ Or a film script. It’s such a exercise in inner strength.

MMA Crossfire: I don’t think I could have said it any better than that. So you were dealing with all of that and then bang, all that work kind of developed that opportunity for Profiler.

Erica Gimpel: Yeah.

MMA Crossfire: And then you were back on the train again. Did Profilercome before E.R. or was it the other way around?

Erica Gimpel: It was simultaneous. I was doing two series at the same time.

MMA Crossfire: Describe that.

Erica Gimpel: It was crazy! At one point, I was going to work on Profiler and then I was going to work on E.R. and I was shooting scenes with George Clooney and then going back to working with Ally (Walker) and other people on Profiler.

Erica Gimpel Profiler still.

It was exhilarating. It was incredible, that time period. It really was. I learned a lot about hard work and dedication. It’s so much more than acting sometimes. Yes it’s the acting, but it’s like when you’re on a show, how do you keep all the crew in a good state? That what I learned from George Clooney. He was so great on the set. He would have the cameramen on the set laughing and that’s a big part of the television show. You want to make sure your crew is happy.

MMA Crossfire: Because you’re with them 20-hour days and if they’re not happy…

Erica Gimpel: It’s not fun. It’s just not fun. And it’s a big, big extended family of people working really long hours. I’ve really learned that over the years. Again, it goes back to: How are your leadership skills? You kind of need the energy on the set. You do. You need it. And I was really impressed with Maggie (Maggie Q)on Nikita because she really takes care of her crew in a really beautiful way.

MMA Crossfire: Fascinating. Because E.R. at the time was the number-one rated show and there you were, doing your thing. Was it a little bit different this time, because you were a little bit older and wiser maybe?

Erica Gimpel: Yeah. You know, I had had a real aversion for Hollywood; I didn’t really want to come back out here honestly. I would have stayed in New York, but I was in a relationship at that time. And it was great in realizing because I got to face something. Not run away, but when something has a past for you and then you go back as an adult and you face it, you kind of shine a light on what was kind of like a ghoul or something. And I was able to do that, and therefore I freed myself. It was great. That was real important. So in that way, it was different.

MMA Crossfire: And can you break down a typical shooting day at that time?

Erica Gimpel: Well I would have to make sure the shooting days were not going to overlap, so my days on Profiler would not conflict with the days on E.R.I had to double-check to make sure that was going to be OK. If my call-time was 6 a.m., I’m up at like 4 a.m. heading over there and then working. If I had lot of scenes, I’d be there all day. The day after the next , I’d be going to Profiler and switching heads. What was so good was that it was a consistent character, so it wasn’t like I was having to play a different character all the time, but it enabled me to really develop these two characters that I really fell in love with. Do you follow what I’m saying?

MMA Crossfire: Yes, I think I get it. I was just thinking that E.R.probably made you more aware of the issues of the medical community.

Erica Gimpel in a scene with George Clooney on E.R. Image courtesy Erica Gimpel.

Erica Gimpel: Well what was cool was that my role on E.R. was a social worker. I wasn’t a doctor; I was a social worker at the hospital and I had friend at the time who was a social worker and I went out with her into the real world and shadowed her. It was really informative for me, so much so that it ended up inspiring me to write a pilot TV script about social work and homelessness in America. These two women who become friends, but one is a social worker within the system and the other had been a social worker but now is running hew own grassroots organization, helping homeless families. The pilot script is entitled Hard Choices. So it not only helped me for the actual E.R. show, but it really gave me insight into some of the realities within the system in the United States.

MMA Crossfire: What is your personal and professional viewpoint on social media?

Erica Gimpel: Well, I think the positive thing of it is it’s bringing our world so much closer. It’s empowering young people to take their own creativity in their own hands, which is amazing. You can get a little camera and create your own video, music or web series. It’s very empowering, not having to go the old route, per se. I definitely grew up with going to record stores, and there’s something beautiful about having the hard copy, the CD in your hands. I’m definitely in a different generation, but I think iTunes is amazing, to have that library at your fingertips to download that song you really want in a second. It makes everything so instantaneous, at your fingertips. So that’s how I feel about that.

Erica Gimpel (R) and Shemar Moore (second left) on the set of the TV show Criminal Minds with the guest stars of the episode “The Company.” Image courtesy Erica Gimpel.

In terms of social media, for me, honestly, I mean I have my own Facebook thing but, but some of it … when people are like, ‘I’m going to the store. I’m doing this,’ it’s a little much for me. There’s a voyeuristic thing that’s occurred. You can follow everybody and hear what they’re doing every second but how present are we being in what we’re actually doing or are we just announcing what we’re doing to everybody while we’re doing it? Are you really in the moment where you are? Are you in the moment, letting everybody know where you are? It’s an odd thing.

MMA Crossfire: If you weren’t an actress or musician, what do you think you’d be doing today?

Erica Gimpel: I think I would be traveling to a lot of different places in the world. Like in New Zealand, I’d be seeing a lot of indigenous cultures all over the world. Understanding, looking at how they lived over time, that’s probably what I’d be doing.

MMA Crossfire: You strike me as someone who keeps up with current events…

Erica Gimpel: Yes.

MMA Crossfire: So I was curious about your thoughts on the Trayvon Martin case.

Erica Gimpel: Very, very disturbing. Very disturbing law, that Stand Your Ground law. I just find that law very disturbing and how it’s now been extended past somebody’s home and into a community and how you can user and bend the law in ways I don’t feel is proper. I think it really speaks to a bigger issue in America and I wish I could speak more to Canada as well but I do feel like we have to heal the racism in this country. We have to heal it. Because I really feel that is what tears the fabric of America apart. I really, really do. It really is disheartening to me. Disheartening. But I’m so glad that Zimmerman has been charged. I’m very grateful for that. Very grateful.

MMA Crossfire: I hear you. Obviously it’s a tough situation and yet with President Obama in office, there seems to be a groundswell on both sides of the case. I was reading that your father is Slavic, is that correct?

Erica Gimpel: Yes.

MMA Crossfire: And your mother is African-American.

Erica Gimpel: Yes.

MMA Crossfire: So you’ve seen this pretty much from the beginning.

Ercia Gimpel: Yes.

MMA Crossfire: You said it’s disheartening, but is there a chance we’ll be able to learn somehow from this and move the country forward in some way?

Erica Gimpel: That’s my prayer. People have taken to the streets here and its been very volatile. And I think it’s there hasn’t been much justice done for this shooting until now. I think for me personally when you mention my racial background… because I don’t always think of the world from this perspective – I’m just moonwalking around living my life – but the gift I feel like it’s given me in my life is fully recognizing each person’s cultural gifts. And I just feel as a world if we can get to a place of celebrating our differences rather than having our racial, religious, ethnic cultural rituals separate us , rather that we can celebrate the uniqueness each on of us offers, then we can have some semblance of understanding and of trying to have dialogue so that we can come together as a world. Know what I’m saying?

MMA Crossfire: Yes, dialogue is very important.

Erica Gimpel: Yeah. And not only, “We’re different here,” but where is the bridge that we come together at, our humanity. Where do we join? We see our differences, but where do we see our sameness? And also where do we celebrate our differences, thanks goodness you view life differently than I do. You know?

MMA Crossfire: Yes, I get it. I think economics can bring things down quickly sometimes. The economy is not great and sometimes some vocal section tends to blame these problems on others. It seems to be a pattern not only in the United States but many countries.

Erica Gimpel: You know, there’s a great radio station here in Los Angeles called the Pacifica radio station, and it’s a pacifist radio station. And what’s so amazing about it is that they have archival audio of so many great thinkers. Interviews between Dr. King, Malcolm X, James Baldwin, just all these great thinkers. Noam Chomsky and Howard Zinn. Wonderful journalists like Amy Goodman. People who have been peace builders in this world. And one man I heard said something that really stayed with me and this goes to what you’re speaking to. ‘When peace becomes as profitable as war, the world will starting honouring peace.’ It’s the financial question, which is what you’re saying. If creating peace really became more profitable than war there would be a different perspective.

MMA Crossfire: That’s a really keen observation.

Erica Gimpel: Isn’t it?

MMA Crossfire: It is, because war is profitable in so many ways.

Erica Gimpel: And keeping people divided is profitable in so many ways.

MMA Crossfire: Yes. A keen observation. That sort of brings me back because I believe you had a role on Babylon 5.

Erica Gimpel: Yes. (Laughs)

MMA Crossfire: I’m curious. Are you a Trekkie or into science fiction?

Erica Gimpel: Not really (Laughs).

MMA Crossfire: So how did you end up on Babylon 5 then?

Erica Gimpel: I know! It was such a great role. It was this singer who was dying of this rare disease and Richard… Did you ever follow Babylon 5?

MMA Crossfire: I was more of a Star Trek fan.

Erica Gimpel: But the actor who was into was so amazing. we got to do such great work. And I also wrote the music to one of the songs I sang on the show. I was like, ‘I’m gonna do it!’

MMA Crossfire: And you did it.

Erica Gimpel: And that’s how I ended up doing that show.

MMA Crossfire: I see. It was an opportunity to develop a few things with a great role.

Erica Gimpel: Exactly.

MMA Crossfire: So how do you balance the ups and downs of the performing life?

Erica Gimpel: Hmm, long question (laughs). I feel like again for me it goes back to spirituality and I said earlier as we began my spiritual Buddhist practice has helped me for many many years in terms of having that strong solid internal base. And also because it helps me to determine what I really want now, because we’re always evolving, growing. And making sure I’m expanding and continually growing. I mean there’ still projects I want to create and films I want to do. I just feel like I’m still evolving, there’s still stages for me to grow. So in terms of balancing it, I just have to be nurturing myself in order to be growing. But you know, it’s not an easy ride. Especially when you’re in like you’re saying that people aren’t seeing the seeds you’re planting yet. And it looks like, ‘Well, she’s gone underground,’ but you know you’ve gone underground because you’re planting, you’re not ready to show it yet. As I mature and become more at peace with the ebbs and flows of it. I don’t know if you become fully at peace with it.

MMA Crossfire: But you are a fighter at heart.

Erica Gimpel: I am, that’s true. I will say that. Someone once said to me , ‘You are very persistent.’ I was like, ‘That is true.’ (Laughs).

MMA Crossfire: You will go over the door, under the door…

Erica Gimpel: Make a new door…

MMA Crossfire: So I have to ask you because you’re right there in California. What do you think of MMA? Have you seen it, what are your thoughts on it?

Erica Gimpel: I’ve only seen portions of it on TV. I never seen an actual live show. I’m blown away at the shape people are in. Unbelievable to me. That’s incredible. I think the training is incredible. That’s what I would say. Anything that keeps people developing and focused and strong, I mean that’s valuable. I don’t I’ve seen enough of it to really speak to it, you know what I mean? But that’s what I see in terms of a quick opinion.

MMA Crossfire: That’s fascinating. You seem pretty open-minded about it. There’s a lot of debate with MMA with some thinking it’s too violent and that sort of thing, so it’s interesting to hear your assessment.

Erica Gimpel: It’s interesting because they use a lot of mixed martial arts on Nikita. The fight co-ordinators are using it. A lot of the choreographed moves use it, so.

MMA Crossfire: Do you have any friends who are fans?

Erica Gimpel: I probably do, but none that comes to mind at this moment. Why?

MMA Crossfire: I was just curious, because it is the fastest growing sport in the world they say.

Erica Gimpel: Hmm.

MMA Crossfire: And the main company, the UFC has come from nowhere in the last 10 years or so to champion and grow the sport.

Erica Gimpel: Wow.

MMA Crossfire: I noticed there are a lot of similarities between the fighters and actors. They’ve had to train and fight – literally – to find success and overcome a lot of challenges along the way and figure out how to get to where they need to be.

Erica Gimpel: In terms of what they had to go through to get where they are at this point.

MMA Crossfire: Right.

MMA Crossfire: Erica, we really appreciate you taking the time to speak with us. Is there anything you want to say to the readers before we go?

Erica Gimpel: I’m saying this to you. I really appreciate you reaching out and wanting to do this. I was surprised. I was like, ” How is MMA reaching out?” (Laughs). I just wanted to say Thank You, to you.

MMA Crossfire: I guess we were both surprised, because I didn’t expect you would say yes, so I’d like to say Thank You. And so you’re going to consider Toronto as a concert stop on a future tour.

Erica Gimpel: Absolutely. Absolutely.

MMA Crossfire: So I can say I convinced you to consider Toronto.

Erica Gimpel: You were the one! I will say it from the stage when I’m there!

]]>http://o.canada.com/sports/mma-crossfire-friday-file-fame-costs-a-chat-with-erica-gimpel/feed7erica-gimpel-10mmacrossfireMMA Crossfire _MG_5458Erica GimpelEsperanza SpaldingErica GimpelErica Gimpel in Malibu, California.Erica GimpelErica GimpelErica GimpelErica GimpelErica GimpelErica GimpelCoco_1061619bimagesphoto-3TV Thursday: Puppets invade Communityhttp://o.canada.com/entertainment/television/tv-thursday-puppets-invade-community
http://o.canada.com/entertainment/television/tv-thursday-puppets-invade-community#respondThu, 11 Apr 2013 06:34:52 +0000http://o.canada.com/?p=227912]]>Community is not quite the same show it was the past few seasons, despite the familiar faces in front of the camera. The energy is more scattered, somehow, in what was already a scattered show. The action is more frenzied; the one-liners less witty without the show’s original creator, head writer and creative inspiration Dan Harmon, who left at the end of last season The new, not-so-improved Community is a reminder that, even though TV is a collaborative effort, an original visionary is hard to replace.

Even so, in just eight short weeks, the revamped Community has shown that in this age of tepid TV sitcoms, even a smaller Community goes a long way.

Joel McHale, left, with Alison Brie

In Thursday’s episode, the study group goes on a recreational balloon flight over the nearby mountains, to spend some quality time together. Faster than you can say ‘Is that safe?’ the balloon comes down in a flying heap in the proverbial middle of nowhere, where the gang is befriended by “a friendly mountain man,” played by guest star Jason Alexander. Wackiness ensues, including an extended bit with the Community characters played by felt puppets.

Sound surreal? That’s the idea. Community has always been equal parts silliness and creative inspiration.

The episode, Intro to Felt Surrogacy, is the ninth in a proposed 13-episode fourth season, which will end May 9 with the forebodingly titled Advanced Introduction to Finality. Parent network NBC unveils its official 2013-14 winter schedule days later, on May 13, and Community is not expected to make the grade.

Danny Glover

That’s a shame because, in its heyday, Community was one of TV’s smartest, funniest comedies — lively, self-aware and self-referential in equal measure. It was always going to be too hip for the room, certainly too hip and insider-y to appeal to a mass audience. Unlike many TV comedies, though, Community made no effort to hide its shortcomings, even as it was tumbling down the ratings rabbit-hole. Community was — and remains — the definition of a cult comedy, in that cult comedies rarely reach out to a wide audience.

Community’s fans, though, are as loyal and passionate as any who follow TV. And while it may not be as sharp and cutting-edge as it used to be, Community is still capable of snapping off the occasional wry one-liner, as in last week‘s outing, Herstory of Dance, in which Community’s resident pop-culture expert Abed (Danny Pudi) — the show’s heart and soul, of all its characters — confessed: “I’ve been making a conscious effort to get away from filtering everything through TV. I figured it’s time to show some growth. ‘It’s been three and a half seasons’ … is what the old me would’ve said.”

Ah, yes, the old Abed — on the old Community. Yes, there have been times this season when Community suffered from “change-nesia” — an actual Community expression — but it’s still a grade above average, most weeks. (City, NBC, 8 ET/PT, 9 MT)

Community

Three to See

• It’s springtime in Pawnee, Ind., which means critter control is once again at the top of the municipal agenda in Parks and Recreation. Leslie Knope (Amy Poehler) decides to give the town’s animal control department a makeover, with predictably hairy results. All that, and Nick Offerman, too. (City, NBC, 8:30 ET/PT, 9:30 MT)

• Glee returns from a three-week hiatus with a new episode, Shooting Star, featuring a Blake Jenner cover of Elton John’s Your Song, Sam (Chord Overstreet) and Brittany (Heather Morris) declaring their love for each other over Extreme’s More Than Words, and what the promos claim will be “an unthinkable event.” The mind, it fairly boggles at the thought. (Global, Fox, 9 ET/PT, 10 MT)

• Tom Cruise and Jimmy Kimmel get together for some off-the-cuff, late-night conversation on Jimmy Kimmel Live! and all bets are off. In theory. Also scheduled: Ke$ha, a.k.a. Kesha Rose Sebert, and a musical performance by Tennessee rock band Paramore. Are you not entertained? (City, ABC, 11:35 ET/PT)

]]>http://o.canada.com/entertainment/television/tv-thursday-puppets-invade-community/feed0CommunityalxstrachanCommunityCommunityCommunityTV Tuesday: Is The New Normal old news?http://o.canada.com/entertainment/television/tv-tuesday-is-the-new-normal-old-news
http://o.canada.com/entertainment/television/tv-tuesday-is-the-new-normal-old-news#respondTue, 02 Apr 2013 06:43:16 +0000http://o.canada.com/?p=222745]]>No April Fool’s joke. Season finales in late March and early April appear to be the new normal, as underperforming sitcoms and dramas wrap up well before the traditional end date in May. Last Man Standing, The Neighbors and Raising Hope have already called it a year, and Tuesday it’s The New Normal’s turn.

The New Normal, created by Glee’s Ryan Murphy with Ali Adler and loosely based on Murphy’s life, features Andrew Rannells and Justin Bartha as a gay couple who hire a young woman, played by Georgia King, to be the surrogate mom to their baby.

The New Normal caused a stir when it debuted in September, in part because of its unconventional idea of family. Some U.S. stations refused to air it, on moral grounds. Reviews were generally mixed, but for different reasons: The New Normal just wasn’t funny, its detractors said. Not in the age of Modern Family, anyway, with its witty repartee and post-modern take on extended families.

Georgia King, left, and Bebe Wood

The New Normal managed to cling to life for a full 22 episodes, however, and it ends its run Tuesday with back-to-back episodes. The timing is apt, as Tuesday’s finale airs just as the issue of gay marriage and life-partners’ benefits was once again put before the U.S. Supreme Court. (No decision had been made at press time.)

In the first episode, Bryan (Rannells) and David (Bartha) are faced with a conundrum: namely, what to name their baby, which they know at this point will be a boy. Surrogate mom Goldie (King) is already mother to a precocious eight-year-old named Shania (Bebe Wood). Trying to help the guy with what’s turning into a mightily difficult decision, she explains why she named her own child the way she did.

Instead of helping, though, her explanation touches off a whole new argument, and an identity crisis for both men.

Justin Bartha, left, NeNe Leakes and Andrew Rannells

In the second and last episode, The Big Day, Bryan and David are determined to tie the knot before the arrival of their baby, no matter what obstacles are thrown in their way on the big day. Naturally, their unborn baby has other ideas. John Stamos and NeNe Leakes make guest appearances in what, by all accounts, looks as if it might be The New Normal’s last trip to the altar before it, too, goes the way of so many of the season’s new sitcoms.

If this should be the end, The New Normal can at least say goodbye with its pride intact. As Bartha explained earlier this year’s on The New Normal’s set in Los Angeles, people seem to like The New Normal more than some of those early reviews would suggest.

Justin Bartha, left, and Andrew Rannells

“The response has been overwhelmingly positive, not just for the political correctness of it all but also the humour of the show,” Bartha said. “People really seem to respond to the writing, which is strong and relevant and irreverent. And they respond to the characters, too, which is everything that we could hope for.”

Well, perhaps not everything. Renewal for a second season would be sweet. Parent network NBC makes its decision official, and final, when the network unveils its fall schedule before advertisers in New York on May 13. In the meantime, there’s always reason to hope.

“The response from young people, particularly, has been very moving,” Rannells said. “I get the impression a lot of young people are watching, probably due to Glee. It’s very inspiring and encourage that we have these teenagers come up to us, gay teenagers who say this means something to them when they see this relationship on television. It’s something they haven’t seen before. So it’s encouraging and inspiring to show that.” (NBC, 8 ET/PT)

Three to See

• Sweet tooth? Here’s a cooking competition you can bite into. Donut Showdown is a homegrown baking competition featuring doughnut makers from across the country in a contest to see who can bake the fairest doughnut of them all. Cheftestants include Vancouver doughnut maker Rajesh (Rags) Narine, of Vancouver’s Cartems Donuterie. (Food, 10 ET/PT)

• Just a guess, now, but chances are at least some of remaining cheftestants on Hell’s Kitchen couldn’t cut it on Donut Showdown. Don’t believe it? Check out Tuesday’s episode of Hell’s Kitchen, in which Gordon Ramsay puts the remaining chefs’ palates to the test with a blind taste challenge. Word to the wise: “Tastes like … chicken” is probably not the smartest thing to say if you want to keep Ramsay’s blood pressure in check. (City, Fox, 8 ET/PT, 9 MT)

• New Girl finds Nick (Jake Johnson) and Schmidt (Max Greenfield) on a “bros’ night out,” which ends, predictably enough, with the guys losing their heads over a mystery woman (guest star Brooklyn Decker). Meanwhile, Jess’s (Zooey Deschanel) relief at having a night on her own doesn’t go as planned — but then you probably guessed that. The show is called New Girl, after all, not Boys’ Night Out. (City, Fox, 9 ET/PT, 10 MT)

]]>http://o.canada.com/entertainment/television/tv-tuesday-is-the-new-normal-old-news/feed0The New NormalalxstrachanThe New NormalThe New NormalThe New NormalCory Monteith heads to rehab for substance abusehttp://o.canada.com/entertainment/cory-monteith-heads-to-rehab-for-substance-abuse
http://o.canada.com/entertainment/cory-monteith-heads-to-rehab-for-substance-abuse#commentsMon, 01 Apr 2013 14:58:34 +0000http://o.canada.com/?p=223553]]>It may be April Fool’s day, but Cory Monteith is not joking around. According to People, the Glee actor checked himself into rehab yesterday.

While there are many fake stories floating around the interwebs today, we’re pretty sure this one isn’t a fake (well, we hope it’s not. It would be pretty distasteful to joke about going to rehab…).

According to People, Monteith, who has struggled with substance abuse in the past “has voluntarily admitted himself to a treatment facility for substance addiction,” his rep told People. “He graciously asks for your respect and privacy as he takes the necessary steps towards recovery.”

Monteith’s on — and off — screen love, Lea Michele said that she’s sticking by her man. The actress’s rep told the mag, “I love and support Cory and will stand by him through this.”

“I am grateful and proud he made this decision.”

Michele is just one of many that have the actor’s back. A producer for 20th century Fox TV, which produces the show, told The Hollywood Reporter, “Cory is a beloved member of the Glee family and we fully support his decision to seek treatment.”

“Everyone at the show wishes him well and looks forward to his return.”

In the past, Monteith has urged kids to stay in school and away from drugs. He told People in 2011, “I don’t want kids to think it’s okay to drop out of school and get high, and they’ll be famous actors, too.”

“But for those people who might give up: Get real about what you want and go after it.”

According to Glee insiders, the final two episodes of this current season have yet to start filming. Sources say that Monteith will be written out of the script while he gets help.

]]>http://o.canada.com/entertainment/cory-monteith-heads-to-rehab-for-substance-abuse/feed5Cory MonteithmirandafurtadoTV Thursday: Glee takes on Backstreet Boyshttp://o.canada.com/entertainment/television/tv-thursday-glee-takes-on-backstreet-boys
http://o.canada.com/entertainment/television/tv-thursday-glee-takes-on-backstreet-boys#commentsThu, 14 Mar 2013 06:22:43 +0000http://o.canada.com/?p=212687]]>Glee is all about mashups and feuds, so it should come as little surprise that Thursday’s episode, titled Feud, features both. There is a twist, however. Even though the bloom is off Glee’s rose — Glee is nowhere near the cultural water cooler conversation piece it was just a year ago — the writer-producers of one of broadcast TV’s most consistently inventive dramas are always looking to throw in an extra curve.

For the first time anyone can remember in the history of McKinley High’s glee club, not to mention Glee itself, the students give feuding teachers Mr. Schue (Matthew Morrison) and recently graduated Finn (Cory Monteith) an assignment, instead of the other way around. It’s part of the kids’ bid to relieve tensions between the two.

Jayma Mays, right, with Matthew Morrison in Glee.

The old-fashioned way of settling differences — on the school playground — is politically incorrect these days, not to mention unseemly for adults who are supposedly all about the healing virtues of song and dance.

Those who’ve watched Glee in recent weeks know the simmering tensions were brought about at least in part by his former student Finn’s forbidden kiss with Mr. Schue’s former would-be bride Emma (Jayma Mays), who left him at the altar in one of those it-could-only-happen-on-TV moments that longtime TV watchers know and love.

Glee devotees know, too, that the show is about the music as much as it is the drama, and the night’s song list includes the Backstreet Boys and *NSYNC, a throwback to the days when it seemed inconceivable that a weekly series like Glee — all that singing! all that dancing! — would ever make it on prime time TV.

Rachel (Lea Michele), left, and Kurt (Chris Colfer) in Glee.

The word is still out on the possibility of Glee’s returning for a fifth season in the fall, but renewal seems a mere formality at this stage. Glee is not Smash. It’s more firmly established. It’s younger and, even now, four seasons and 82 episodes in, it still seems fresh and capable of surprise.

Another new episode will air March 21, and then it will take a spring break of sorts until April 11. Glee’s season finale is slated for May 9. By then, its fate will be known. Fox officially unveils its fall 2013 schedule on May 13, kicking off a week of broadcast network fall scheduling announcements.

Expect to see Glee make the list. Smash, on the other hand — not so much. (Global, Fox, 9 ET/PT, 10 MT)

Three to See

• Elementary is definitely coming back for a second season: The reimagined, reinvented Sherlock Holmes tale has been at or near the head of this year’s freshman class since September.

In an episode called It’s Deja Vu All Over Again, Dr. Joan Watson (Lucy Liu) takes on her first solo case, that of a woman who vanished shortly after leaving her husband a tearful breakup video.

Meanwhile, Holmes (Jonny Lee Miller) finds a new game afoot in the subway. But wait, there’s more: The two cases are connected, which means Watson may not be flying solo after all. As you were. (Global, CBS, 10 ET/PT, 8 MT)

• The mental geniuses in The Big Bang Theory aren’t always as bright as they let on. Wolowitz, for example, finds himself not knowing what to do when he receives a letter from his father, in an episode called The Closet Reconfiguration. Should he open it, or not? On such matters rests the fate of the universe. (CTV, CBS, 8 ET/PT, 9 MT)

The numbers have tailed off in the Broadway musical drama’s sophomore season, but don’t stop the music just yet.

It turns out — in a classic case of who’s watching being more important than how many — that Smash has the most affluent audience of any prime time entertainment series on the commercial broadcast networks. This according to the advertising bean counters in New York who are paid to know these things.

It turns out that if you’re making $100,000 a year or more, you may well be watching Smash. That makes sense, New York Times’ media critic Bill Carter noted last week, because with ticket prices the way they are, high-income earners are about the only people who can afford to take in a Broadway show these days.

Smash has also been described as the gayest show on TV — Glee followers may have something to say about that — but that’s not all it is. Week in and week out, no commercial broadcast drama, not even Glee, delivers such lush, eye-popping visual spectacles. At times, watching Smash is like watching a Broadway musical come alive before one’s eyes.

Katharine McPhee as Karen Cartwright. (Craig Blankenhorn/NBC)

And while the sole likable character — Katharine McPhee’s song-and-dance ingenue Karen Cartwright — is neither the strongest singer nor the best dancer, there’s enough heart and soul there to hold one’s interest, even when the other characters are being tetchy, difficult and unpleasant to be around.

In Tuesday’s episode, The Read-Through, Karen, having landed the coveted role of Marilyn Monroe, wonders once again who she can trust. Julia (Debra Messing) has qualms of her own after Tom (Christian Borle) airs his suspicions of her extracurricular activities. New hires Jimmy (Jeremy Jordan) and Kyle (Andy Mientus) experience an unexpected crisis of confidence of their own, when Hit List is read through for the first time.

And Ivy (Megan Hilty), the best pure voice in the group who lost the coveted Marilyn Monroe gig to her younger, less experienced rival, frets that her new gig may not be what she hoped for, after she meets her co-star Terry Falls (guest star Sean Hayes).

Smash has been retooled this season — a new supervising producer and a handful of new actors and writers. But, much like the Broadway shows it depicts, it’s still a work in progress.

“Doing a TV series isn’t our first profession, but … just watching the series unfold over the first season and seeing people’s reaction was fascinating,” Broadway veteran and Smash co-creator Neil Meron said earlier this year.

Sean Hayes as Terry Falls, left, with Megan Hilty as Ivy Lynn .

“I read everything. I read the love. I read the hate. I read the bad. And, looking back now, I hope I was objective enough to know that some things were said that made sense. First-season shows need time to find themselves, to lock into what they are, especially a show like Smash, which has so many moving parts.

“When it works, and there were moments that worked in Season 1, I dare anybody to say what could be better entertainment.”

Broadway veteran Hilty said she could not worry about how many people are watching Smash. She does know a few who are, though.

“I get asked all the time from my friends on Broadway about guest stars and who’s coming on the show,” Hilty said. “But we’re not doing a reality show. We’re doing a drama. Sure, there’s stuff that could be more realistic. But why do that when it’s fantastic as it is?”

The show must go on — until, of course, the numbers drop so far it’s no longer tenable. (CTV Two, NBC, 10 ET/PT, 8 MT)

• The Joe Schmo Show, the reality-TV show for people who hate reality TV, reaches the final reveal in which hapless innocent and The Full Bounty contestant Chase Rogan learns the reality show has been completely made up, his fellow contestants are all actors and he’s been led along all along.

The bright side: At least he gets to walk away with some cash and a measure of fleeting fame. About 15 minutes worth. (Spike TV, 10 ET/7 PT)

• American Idol continues to stretch the definition of the word ‘semifinal’ when the Top 10 girls perform live-on-tape from Las Vegas, for viewers’ votes.

But wait, there’s more. In other semifinals, the Top 10 boys perform, also live-on-tape, also from Las Vegas, Wednesday. This year’s Idol finalists will be revealed in the season’s first elimination show, Thursday. Head ache much? (CTV, Fox, 8 ET/PT, 9 MT)

Advance reviews have drawn parallels between Zero Hour and The Da Vinci Code, and there are similarities. When Zero Hour’s story jumps to present day from 1930s Germany, for example, the story — about a reluctant Everyman drawn into a labyrinthine conspiracy involving secretive priests, ancient scrolls and a seemingly indestructible, silver-haired assassin — it’s hard not to be reminded of Dan Brown’s conspiracy thriller about an Everyman on the trail of the Holy Grail and a murderous sect of albino monks.

As Zero Hour’s mystery becomes more clear, though — and the producers have promised a reveal at the end of each weekly episode — it begins to look, sound and feel more like one of Ludlum’s early novels about neo-Nazis, Nazi sympathizers and real, actual Nazis left over from the bad old days, railing away in embittered old age at the sorry state of present-day affairs and how the Master Race has gone, well, to hell in a hand basket.

Toss in a dash of The Boys from Brazil — genetic experiments in Paraguay! — and what’s left is a predictable but nonetheless entertaining romp about an easy-to-relate-to good guy chasing down bad guys everyone loves to hate.

The hero, alternative-magazine publisher Hank Galliston, is played with a believable empathy by Anthony Edwards, who played one of TV’s most beloved and fondly remembered characters, Dr. Mark Greene, in ER back in the second golden age of network TV dramas, when ER and The West Wing were winning Emmys and drawing audiences at the same time.

Galliston is the editor of Modern Skeptic, an alt monthly that debunks myths and exposes conspiracy theories as frauds. When Galliston’s wife, played by Jacinda Barrett, is kidnapped one day from the antique clock shop she manages, Galliston finds himself drawn into a conspiracy that shows every sign of being real, despite his initial skepticism.

Zero Hour’s pilot episode was filmed in Montreal but the story, and subsequent episodes, were based and filmed in New York.

If you can get past the occasional overly serious, portentous dialogue — Charles S. Dutton’s all-knowing Father Mickle, for example, counselling Galliston, “What we have here is of profound historical import,” — and you go into Zero Hour with the right attitude — this ain’t Homeland you’re watching here — you’ll be pleasantly surprised.

And entertained.

Despite its silly moments, Zero Hour is refreshingly spry and brisk. Edwards is convincing as the good-hearted, well-meaning schlub whose sole concern is getting his wife back alive and unharmed. And the producers are smart enough not to keep the viewer guessing down an endless series of blind alleys and rabbit holes.

Michael Nyqvist as White Vincent in Zero Hour. (Phillippe Bosse/ABC)

There’s room for the occasional flash of humour, too, as when Michael Nykvist’s silver-coiffed baddie taunts Galliston on a cellphone, saying, “Well, God bless you and your Hollywood films.”

Writer-producer Paul Scheuring, a featured speaker at the Banff Television Festival a number of years back, has promised that Zero Hour has a proper ending and won’t leave viewers hanging. Scheuring says he came up with the ending first, then worked his way back from there. Zero Hour isn’t one of these TV thrillers that will lead nowhere, in other words. Scheuring has a plan in mind.

Of course, in TV, as in life, plans don’t always go as intended. Just watch Zero Hour’s first hour, if you doubt that. (Global, ABC, 8 ET/PT, 9 MT)

Three to See

• Coincidence is golden. Glee unveils its long-awaited wedding episode — three years in the waiting — between Emma (Jayma Mays) and Will (Matthew Morrison), on Valentine’s Day no less. (Global, Fox, 9 ET/PT, 10 MT)

• Is anyone paying attention to American Idol this year? Well, yes — 1.8 million Canadians to be exact, at last count, good enough to rank Idol at No. 5 on the ratings chart of the week ending Jan. 27. Thursday’s edition is the last of the so-called Hollywood rounds, in which the judges name their Top 40 contestants. Still a crowd, though, isn’t it? (CTV Two, Fox, 8 ET/PT, 9 MT)

• If you know the difference between a liger and a tigon, you’ll appreciate the Nature of Things program, Meet the Coywolf, a look at a new hybrid carnivore — a cross between a coyote and a wolf — that is starting to make inroads into major cities across the Atlantic and Eastern seaboard after originating in Ontario’s Algonquin Provincial Park. (CBC, 8 ET/PT)

]]>http://o.canada.com/entertainment/tv-thursday-zero-hour/feed1Zero HouralxstrachanZero HourZero HourGlee wedding pegged for Valentine’s Day episodehttp://o.canada.com/entertainment/television/glee-wedding-pegged-for-valentines-day-episode
http://o.canada.com/entertainment/television/glee-wedding-pegged-for-valentines-day-episode#respondThu, 07 Feb 2013 15:40:24 +0000http://o.canada.com/?p=195423]]>LOS ANGELES — It was a brisk, clear, unseasonably warm winter’s afternoon at the 20th Century Fox film lot in Century City, where Glee is made.

Inside, though, on the sound stage Kevin McHale, Jenna Ushkowitz, Darren Criss, Chord Overstreet and the other Glee players have called a home-away-from-home for the better part of four years, it was decidedly cool. Chilly, even.

Writer-producer Dante Di Loreto and a handful of Glee performers — Ushkowitz and McHale from the original cast, along with several of this year’s Glee newcomers — were assembled in a makeshift choir room on hard, wooden benches.

They were filming an episode that won’t air until Valentine’s Day but — spoiler alert — evidence of a wedding was everywhere.

The episode, christened I Do — no last-minute surprise-at-the-altar there — focuses on Will (Matthew Morrison) and Emma’s (Jayma Mays) wedding day, and the evidence of pending nuptials ranged from the word “wedding” scrawled across the choir-room chalkboard to the knowing looks, nods and winks the performers shoot each other across the room.

“There are also things that are going to shock the heck out of you,” Di Loreto added, actually using the word “heck.” “That’s the fun part. That’s what’s coming down the pike.”

I Do will feature a reunion between the old and the new, as the former and current members of McKinley High’s New Directions song-and-dance troupe gather one more time, to celebrate a day of romance and love.

Glee has undergone a metamorphosis this season, after a season that saw most of the original high-school characters graduate and start their new lives as adults. New characters, and new actors, joined the Glee acting company. In Glee, as in a real school, life goes on. Di Loreto echoed Glee co-creators Ryan Murphy and Brad Falchuk’s insistence that Glee not become one of these TV dramas where school-age characters are still in high school when they’re in their 30s.

Every four years — assuming Glee stays on the air that long — a new group of students will move in, and the old group will move on, some to fame and the bright lights of Broadway, others to relative obscurity. Such is life.

In the real world, the actors have had to adjust to Glee’s carousel of changing faces.

“At the beginning, it was hard, because you miss the people you’ve seen for four years,” Ushkowitz said.

Ushkowitz plays Tina Cohen-Chang, an initially shy, insecure performer with a stutter who first appeared in Glee’s pilot episode in May 2009, and blossomed into the self-possessed singer her character is today.

“But then you realize just how amazing these (new) kids are,” Ushkowitz continued. “They were thrown into this well-oiled machine, but they just took off with us. It’s refreshing, actually. It’s cool, too, to see them where we were three years ago. It’s a process of growing and changing. We’re working right now as a unit, and we’re having a great time.”

McHale — an able-bodied actor who plays wheelchair-bound paraplegic Artie Abrams, the self-described “nerd” and guitarist who uses the glee club as his social safety net — added that it would have been easy for the new cast members to be intimidated.

“It went from us feeling like older brothers and sisters to us learning from them,” McHale said. “It would have been so nice to say they were rude and untalented but, unfortunately, it’s been quite the opposite.”

Glee’s already large ensemble is growing all the time, and it can be hard for the performers to track of the interlocking storylines at times. Glee, McHale quipped, is a show with a lot of moving parts.

“Thank God I don’t have to come up with the storylines because this show would’ve have been cancelled immediately,” he said. “I think, for Artie, getting to direct has been a real boon. It seems natural that he would pursue the directing thing, but I’m just thankful I didn’t have to think of that myself.”

Jake (Jacob Artist, left) and Ryder (Blake Jenner, right) are among the new additions to Glee this season. (Adam Rose/Fox)

Di Loreto is grateful that Glee has touched the popular nerve — but mindful, too, that it’s just a TV show.

“I don’t think television shows change the world,” he said quietly. “I think what we do is put a spotlight on certain pieces of the world. People have been singing and dancing forever. The thing is, there was a moment there when that wasn’t on television. There was a time, a long time ago, when you couldn’t be a performer unless you could sing and dance. That changed. We’ve simply put the spotlight back where it was. There are all these people who feel song and dance in their heart, who have these remarkable abilities, but had no way to express them. And that’s where we came in. We want to put the spotlight on things that everyone’s thinking about but nobody’s talking about, and that’s what this show did.

“At the end of the day, though, we’re a television show. We’re three-and-a-half seasons in. People talk about it like we’ve been around forever. We haven’t. It’s incredibly challenging to produce a musical on prime time TV, based on the budgets, the schedule and the restrictions in storytelling. I’m still excited. The number of musical numbers we’ve done is truly staggering. We’ve learned a lot about the process.

“In the history of TV shows, this is still a very young show. It’s a show that — hopefully — will bear more fruit as we move on.”

The Job, a new reality program in the vein of Undercover Boss and The Glee Project, goes behind the scenes at a ritual every working person has experienced in his or her lifetime — the job interview. The twist is that, each week in The Job, a handful of candidates are competing for an opening at an established firm, from Epic Records and Live Nation to Major League Soccer and Cosmopolitan magazine.

Veteran U.K. producer Michael Davies said the idea first came to him while he was making The Glee Project, which offers contestants a chance to win a recurring role on the TV musical dramedy Glee. Davies said that it occurred to him while making The Glee Project that the months-long process was similar to an extended job interview.

It wasn’t until his daughter told him she was quitting college and looking for a full-time job, though — college no longer being the sure route to productive employment it once was — that he realized just how important a role the job interview plays in young people’s lives today.

“The whole idea of a management training (program), the kind of job I was going for when I was in college, has just fallen apart,” Davies said last month in Los Angeles. “It became clear to me that, after the crash, something was broken in the ecosystem. This idea the best people are recruited by the best companies to get the best jobs no longer applied.”

The opener will focus on the job search for an assistant manager with The Palm Restaurant Group, a fine-dining steak house chain with 25 locations across the U.S. and outlets in Mexico City and London.

“I’m proud to say that, over the course of the eight episodes we’ve already filmed, we’ve offered more than 16 jobs to 40 candidates,” Davies said. “I believe the other 24 candidates will all have received job offers of their own by the time this airs.

“More importantly, to the audience watching at home, people are going to learn about job interviews, about preparing their resumés, the things they need to know going into a job interview. It seems simple, but nobody’s ever made a show about interviewing for a job.”

Co-producer Mark Burnett, who made his name with Survivor and is now one of the lead producers of The Voice, said The Job’s big calling card is positive energy and the idea that anyone can get the job they want, if they apply themselves.

“I think I’ve proved in the last few years that a kinder approach on television does work,” Burnett said. “The results are there, if you look at The Voice versus The X Factor or (American Idol), which are based on ripping people apart for entertainment value. The Voice doesn’t do that, and it crushed both of them in the ratings.

“People don’t want to see other people getting ripped down anymore. Every episode of (The Job) has a different ending, a surprise ending. It’s really cool.

“If viewers get nothing more from it, especially those viewers who want to change jobs or are looking for jobs, there are lessons here of what to do and what not to do in an interview. You don’t have to be applying to these companies — you can be applying for any job. It can be for a job as a lifeguard. It can be anything. There’s a certain way to show up and conduct yourself if you want a ‘yes.’”

There are no guarantees for the successful candidate beyond the initial job offer, Davies noted.

“It would be inauthentic otherwise,” Davies said. “The salary is what the company would pay commensurate with that particular job. The commitment to that employee is what it would be for a regular job candidate. This whole show is based on an authentic premise. It would have been fake to make it any other way.

“I would say that, of the 16 people who have been offered jobs through the show so far, some will go on to be phenomenally successful at the companies they now work at. Some of them have already started, and are doing brilliantly. Some of them, just like in the real job market, won’t work out. That’s life. That’s just the way it is.

“What we did was provide an opportunity for these 40 candidates that they otherwise might not have had, to go in front of these employers for their dream job.”

Burnett had the last word. “Remember, this is not a documentary,” he said. “It’s an entertainment television show. So it’s got to be dramatic. You have to care about the outcome.

“J. Paul Getty once said, ‘You can take away my oilfields, you can take away my factories. Just leave me my 50 best people and everything will double in five years.’ The economy runs on great people working and making companies. These companies are nothing without people.

“Yes, the companies in this show are getting (free) publicity. Why else would they do it — risk falling on their face on national television. They did it because to find someone brilliant is so very valuable. It really is.”

The Job premieres Friday, Feb. 8, on CBS at 8 ET/PT.

]]>http://o.canada.com/entertainment/television/the-job-adds-workforce-drama-to-reality-tv/feed0The JobalxstrachanTV weekend: Screen Actors Guild Awards, hockeyhttp://o.canada.com/entertainment/television/tv-weekend-screen-actors-guild-awards-hockey
http://o.canada.com/entertainment/television/tv-weekend-screen-actors-guild-awards-hockey#commentsSat, 26 Jan 2013 07:26:20 +0000http://o.canada.com/?p=187026]]>Award shows are a dime a dozen this time of year, but the 19th Annual Screen Actors Guild Awards show promises the true film and TV aficionado with something different.

It’s not only that the awards are decided by working actors with an active union card — the very definition of “being judged by one’s peers.” The real reason for the movie buff and avid TV viewer to watch are the awards for ensemble acting, in both TV and movies.

The best actors often say it’s about making the other person look good, not how you make yourself look, and for once lip service really means something.

The problem with many award shows is that there are too many categories, not too few, but in this one case a separate category for ensemble acting makes perfect sense.

What is harder to predict is how the consensus vote is likely to go in a field that includes the ensembles from Boardwalk Empire, Breaking Bad, Downton Abbey, Homeland and Mad Men.

It’s not just about the stars, either. The official nominations list for “outstanding performance by an ensemble in a drama series” includes 15 actors from Boardwalk Empire, 11 from Breaking Bad, 22 from Downton Abbey, 15 from Homeland and 14 from Mad Men.

The comedy ensemble nominations include the casts from 30 Rock, The Big Bang Theory, Glee — all 19 actors — Modern Family, Nurse Jackie and The Office. And, no, Steve Carell did not make the list from The Office: The nomination is for the post-Carell/Michael Scott period.

Interestingly, the SAG TV awards draw no distinction between lead performances and supporting: It’s all acting to them.

Movie buffs, meanwhile, will have their eye on competitive races that may give a better idea of who will win the big prize when the Oscars are handed out on Feb. 24. Unlike the Golden Globes, the Screen Actors Guild makes no distinction between drama and comedy or musical, so there can be no two winners for best female actor in a leading role: It will either be Jessica Chastain or Jennifer Lawrence, but not both.

Note, too, how SAG draws a distinction between “actress” and “female actor.” To the actors’ union every member’s an actor, regardless of gender.

The movie ensemble award will come down to the casts of Argo, The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel, Les Miserables, Lincoln and Silver Linings Playbook.

Canadian movie buffs and TV watchers are fortunate. In the U.S., the SAG Awards are relegated to the cable channels TNT and TBS, but here they will air on a conventional broadcast network, Global — available to anyone with a working TV, in other words.

Do the SAG Awards really matter? Probably not. The Oscars are the granddaddy of film awards, with good reason, and are the only award movie buffs tend to remember down the road.

For anyone with an abiding passion for movies and TV, though, for anyone in the business and for anyone curious about what goes into making a remarkable performance, the 19th Annual Screen Actors Guild Awards are a must-see. (Sunday, Global, 8 ET/PT, 9 MT)

SUNDAY

Emotions were running high on message boards two weeks ago, following a story in a national newspaper about the then-stalled NHL lockout talks. Sentiments were running more than 90 per cent in one direction: How dare NHL players and club owners hold the fans to ransom. How dare they assume we’ll come running back. And, by the way, now that our family has socked away that season-ticket money for other uses, we’ve found something else to do with our time. The NHL will be back one day, but we won’t.

That sentiment wasn’t just the majority: On some message boards it represented nearly 100 per cent of the conversation.

Last weekend, as you know by now, Hockey Night in Canada returned to record numbers. Overnight ratings — adjusted upward later in the week, as different time zones reported — showed that more than 3,317,000 viewers watched the Toronto Maple Leafs put a dent in the Montreal Canadiens’ home opener.

Those are Stanley Cup numbers, and they suggest that hockey is not only back but back with a vengeance.

Tonight’s doubleheader opens with the Leafs on the road against the New York Rangers and ends with the Battle of Alberta, with the up-and-down Edmonton Oilers facing the Flames in Calgary.

All the usual suspects are back, with Ron MacLean once again riding herd over intermission breaks and Don Cherry once again tellin’ it like it is.

Cherry’s caustic assessment of post-lockout winners-and-losers during last week’s Coach’s Corner had the owners gaining 80 per cent of what they wanted, leaving the players with just 20 per cent, a sentiment that doesn’t jibe with others’ opinions. But then if it did, it wouldn’t be Coach’s Corner.

A densely packed, agenda-filled Satellite Hotstove — once again presided over by MacLean, rushing through his notes with barely enough time to throw to commercials — was a reminder that hockey is still very much on people’s minds and part of the public conversation.

Later in the week, on Rogers Sportsnet’s Prime Time Sports with Bob McCown, the veteran Toronto radio host and sports shock jock wondered if the numbers — both arena attendance and the TV ratings — will hold up beyond the initial euphoria of those early home openers. The panel’s consensus was that, yes, they will. A shorter season means regular-season games are meaningful for a change — every game, and not just those pitting division leaders against each other.

Now, for the first time in recent NHL memory, that overtime shootout win or loss in late January and early February could mean the difference between making the playoffs and again hitting the lottery for a high draft pick.

That same Prime Time Sports panel warned fans not to expect shorter seasons with fewer games in future, though, unless they’re willing to swallow higher ticket prices. Neither the owners nor the players will be willing to give up the financial perks of an 82-game schedule.

CBC-TV says last week’s Habs-Leafs number set a record for a Saturday night regular season game.

More tellingly, perhaps, nearly 1.5 million viewers tuned in to watch the late game, in which the Vancouver Canucks dropped their home opener to the Anaheim Ducks, and another 1.5 million watched the afternoon game between Winnipeg and Ottawa.

If nothing else, this proves two things.

One, Saturday-night hockey and Hockey Night in Canada are back with a vengeance.